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ADAM MICKIEWICZ, THE NATIONAL
_ POET OF POLAND

(Published 1911)

Daily News. — " Miss Gardner's able study. . . . Lovex§_ of
t he he rflic.in history will be grateful to Miss Gardner for her account
of this noble enthusiast." (Rest of review, of more than a column,
analysing the matter of the book.)

Scotsman. — " So little is known in this country about Polish
literati that a book which tells the moving story of the greatest
among the poets of Poland is sure ol"a~ welcome from student
readers. The present interesting volume — while it is instructive
in no small measure as to the scope and character of Mickiewicz's
poetry and literary work — draws so lively a picture of the perse-
cutions and sufferings and of the uncon^uered spirit of the poet
that its human interest easily overbears mere questions of litera-
ture. . . . The work, at once discriminating and enthusiastic,
will warmly interest all sympathetic students of Slavonic popular
literature." (Rest of review analyses matter of the book.)

Westminster Gazette.—" Miss Gardner tells the story with
excellent insight and sympathy. . . . The author's description of
the four parts of this poem gives a vivid idea of its far-reaching
scope, its passionate energy, and intensity of patriotism." (Rest
of review, tHfee-quarters of a column, analyses matter of book.)

Birmingham Daily Post. — " We are very glad to see that
Miss Gardner has at last produced a well-documented and im-
passioned study of the life and achievements of Mickiewicz. . . .
Miss Gardner has done a fine and useful piece of work." (Rest
of review, a column, analysis of matter of book, and calling
attention to the importance of work upon Poland.)

Manchester Guardian. — " Miss Gardner, a devoted and accom-
plished student of Polish literature, has performed a considerable
service in making better known the life and work of the most
famous of PoUsh poets. . . . His pathetic story is told in great
detail and with deep sympathy by Miss Gardner. . . . Some of
her prose renderings are of great beauty — often with the wild and
wayward beauty which we associate with Chopin." (Rest of
review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter of book.)

New Age. — " A real work of love, honest and thorough." ' (Rest
of review, of about a column, analysis of matter of the book.) :

1

ADAM MICKIEWICZ [contd.)

Cambridge Review. — " Miss Gardner . . . gives us a remark-
ably true picture of the relations between the poet and his country.
. . . Miss Gardner has realized fully what she attempted, and
indeed few countrymen of the poet could perform the task better."

Bulletin Polonais. — " Une etude biographique et litteraire tr^s
substantielle, tres bien documentee, con^ue tr^s methodique-
ment et ecrite avec beaucoup de charme et de clarte. . . . C'est
h notre connaissance le premier livre anglais qui traite avec tant
d'ampleur et tant de conscience une question d'histoire littergLire
polonaise. Nous esp^rons que Mile. Gardner ne se bomera pas
k ce brillant coup d'essai."

Academy. — " Miss Gardner has done a real service." (The rest
of a very long and sympathetic review is an analysis of the matter
of the book.)

Tablet.—" In these days, when the reader is embarrassed by
the abundance of books that are not wanted ... it is well to
meet with a work at once so necessary and so well done. . . .
When great poetry has waited so long for appreciation, and a story
full of interest has been left untold, we might welcome any attempt
to supply the deficiency. But in this case the work is so admirably
done that it would be welcome, though we had other biographies
or critical appreciations of the Polish poet. This remarkable
work . . . Apart from the purely biographical interest, which is
of a high order, there is much that throws new light on the tragic
pages of modem Polish history. ... It may be hoped that this
book will do something to awaken a new interest in the history
and literature of Poland." (Rest of review, about a column,
analysis of matter.)

Standard. — " This is the first attempt which has been made
in our language to capture the imagination by a critical study
of the fine character and high achievements of Adam Mickiewicz.
Miss Monica Gardner writes exceedingly well — with knowledge,
with sympathy, and with vision. . . . The book ... is a capable
bit of work, and it certainly succeeds in giving the reader a realistic
and impressive picture of a man who loved Poland with an un-
divided heart." (Rest of review, about three-quarters of a column,
analysis of matter.)

Athenaeum. — " One would have been grateful ior a moderate
biography of Poland's national poet ; Miss Gardner's work merits
a more distinguished adjective, and therefore is doubly worthy
of attention." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

ADAM MICKIEWICZ {contd.)

Glasgow Herald.—" The intensely tragic story is set forth
by Miss Gardner with skill equal to her sympathy. . . . What
an inspiration Mickiewicz was, and is, may be readily gathered
from the translations given by Miss Gardner, magnificent even
as prose. . . . The book is singularly interesting as the story
of a man and a nation and as giving a vivid glimpse of a poetry
almost unknown in Britain." (Rest of review, about three-
quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Yorkshire Post. — " This book of Miss Gardner's should appeal
powerfully to EngUsh readers because its subject has the provo-
cations of novelty ; because the work is gracefully and sym-
pathetically written, with discerning and intimate knowledge of
fact and of character, and yet discriminating and just ; and be-
cause it embodies once more the story, especially dear to our
hearts, of the struggle of a patriotic race for freedom and national
existence." (Rest of review, about three-quarters of a column,
analysis of matter.)

POLAND: A STUDY IN NATIONAL
IDEALISM

(Published 1915)

Evening Standard. — " Miss Monica Gardner's eloquent book is
a little epic of sorrow and courage. The picture that it paints
is pitiful and_s_plendid. . . . The book must be read for itself.
The' author has a style that has caught fire from its^ subject, and
a grace and restraint that make the book an appeal to all lovers
of literature, as well as to every generous heart." (Rest of review,
three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Spectator. — " Her eloquent and touching book. . . . Miss
Gardner gives us an excellent account", enriched by many spirited
translations, of the principal works of these remarkable poets."
(Rest of review, two columns and a half, a laudatory analysis of
matter.) ^

T. P.'s Weekly. — " The admirable historical summary in Monica
Gardner's Poland. . . . The author has written a book that must
be read. . . . The position of Poland is one of the important
questions to be settled by this war, and we cannot know too
much of the soul of a country that, divided among spoilers, still
retained national unity." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a
column, analysis of matter.)

POLAND : A STUDY IN NATIONAL IDEALISM (contd.)
Pall Mall Gazette.—" Her well- written and brilliant book.
This book deals vnth more than the soul of a jiation. It
speaks for the S2iiit_of_a_people. . . . Miss 'Gardner is steeped in
Polish literature, and her account of these great poets is intensely
interesting. . . . Her description of Poland during the last hundred
years is full of pathos and power. There is no straining after
effect ; the facts are ineffaceable ; and this brief story brings
out into bold relief the sufferings, sorrows, sacrifices, struggle,
and strength of the Polish race. . . . This book is an eloquent
description of a great people." (Rest of review, three-quarters
of a column, analysis of matter.)

World. — " At present the only kind of ' War Book ' that
seems to us really worth reading is that of which the conflict now
going on is rather the occasion than the cause. Such, we may
say, is Poland : a Study in National Idealism, by Monica M.
Gardner. . . . Clearly Miss Gardner has not been hurried into
producing this admirable volume by the mere war, but only gives
out in season the enlightening result of what she long previously
assimilated and made her own. This book really reveals Poland."
(Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Outlook.—" In this little volume a faithful and fearless picture
is given of her [Poland's] struggle for independence." (Rest of
review, about a column, analysis of matter.)

Daily News.—" Miss Gardner's sejisitiye and accomplished
little study. . . . Miss Gardner's extremely spirited renderings."
(Rest of review, column and a half, analysis of matter.)

Manchester Guardian.—" For the first time in England we
are able to read books on Poland by an author who has made a
special study of that country. To those who know not Poland
this book will be a revelation. ' ' (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Birmingham Daily Post.—" We render Miss Gardner the tribute
of deep gratitude for introducing us to a noble literature." (Rest
of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

The Venturer.—" Miss Gardner has done well to give us this
book. It is not large in bulk, but it is no exaggeration to call
it a great book."

Expository Times.—" Let us read and follow the course of
the war. Let us read and understand what must be when the
war is over. Let us read Monica M. Gardner's delightful book
on Poland. It is both literary and historical." (Rest of review
quotation from the book.)

POLAND : A STUDY IN NATIONAL IDEALISM (contd.)

London Quarterly Review. — " The book is a real contribution
to the true understanding of Polish character ^nd Polish aspira-
tions." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Tablet. — " This masterly critical appreciation of a great national
Uterature. . . . This welcome work on the tragic story of the
PoUsh people and on the glories of their great national literature
is singularly happy in the opportuneness of its appearance. For
however much other books may be neglected, there is naturally
a great demand for books that offer any information on matters
connected \\ith the war. In most cases, no doubt, what is called
war literature is scarcely literature in the strict sense of the word.
But here, happily, we have a book of rare Uterary merit . . .
and it comes before us when it meets a present need. . . . Miss
Gardner, in this fascinating little book on Poland, enables Enghsh
readers to understand the tragic story of the Polish people, their
unbroken spiritual unity, an"d lEelr undauntea hope in the future
dT_their country." (Rest of review, two columns and a half,
analysis of matter.)

Times. — " Miss Gardner is an instructed and cultivated student
of Poland."

POLAND ("PEEPS AT MANY LANDS")

(Published 1917)

Daily Telegraph. — " To their popular series of travel books
called ' Peeps at Many Lands ' Messrs. Black have now added
a volume on Poland, by Monica M. Gardner, The more we know
of Poland and the Polish people the better our understanding of
the causes of the war. . . . The book is as good reading as any
fiction, and the most austere critic must admit its relevance to the
task of ' getting on with the war.' "

Spectator. — " Young people should read Miss Monica Gardner's
short and interesting book on Poland. . . . Enghsh readers know
very little about the Poles, and this book deserves attention, for
we cannot as a nation afford any longer to neglect Poland."

Common Cause. — " The Uttle volume gives a most vivid and
delightful picture of Poland as it was before the war, with its
spacious steppes and wonderful forests, and it tells of the nation's
struggle for freedom against over^vhelming odds. The book deals
largely with the manners and customs of the people in modem
times, which the writer makes extremely interesting ; but it tells
also the main events in the history of the unfortunate kingdom
from early days."

POLAND ("PEEPS AT MANY LANDS") (contd)

Globe.—" Miss Gardner tells in a most touching way the
picturesque story of that unhappy land."

Aberdeen Journal.—" To the ' Peeps ' series of attractive
books ... has been added this dainty volume on Poland by
Monica M. Gardner, well known as the author of Adam Mickiewicz
and Poland : a Study in National Idealism. That the war must
have a vital effect on the destiny of Poland is universally acknow-
ledged, and now is the time to study the characteristics of the
Poles. ... The chapter devoted to Polish National Customs is
quite* fascinating, and ' A Day in Cracow ' presents vivid gUmpses
of the chief city of ' Austrian ' Poland. The vexatious character
of the rule in ' Prussian ' Poland is effectively exposed. Miss
Gardner possesses a clear and pleasing style well suited to a popular
and well-timed book."

Tablet. — " With the fate of Poland once again in the melting-
pot of a European war, Miss Monica Gardner's sympathetic account
of its people and cities in Poland may be confidently recommended
as the work of one who knows and loves her subject. It is a work
which, small as it is, deserves the attention of readers young and
old."

Polish Review.—" Miss Monica Gardner's little book on Poland
in the ' Peeps at Many Lands ' ought to be in the hands of all
in this country who want to get to the heart of Poland. The
authoress both knows and feels her subject, and her lively pic-
turesque style .VVlhalies lier page^ interesting both to young
ana'oidT'" ^

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND

(Published 1919)

Spectator.—" Miss Gardner has followed up her monograph
on Mickiewicz with an admirable companion study of Zygmunt
Krasinski, the * Unknown ' or ' Anonymous ' Poet of Poland, second
only to Mickiewicz in genius, and. in virtue of his personality, his
strange gift of prescience, and the romantic and tragic conditions of
his life, appealing to a wider audience than his great contemporary.
He came on his father's side of an ancient, noble, and wealthy
Polish family, related to the House of Savoy ; his mother was
a Radziwill. A precocious only child, he was brought up in his
father's palace in Warsaw and on his country estate at Opinogora.
Vincent Krasinski had fought with distinction in the Pohsh Legion

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND (contd.)

under Napoleon ; he was a commanding figure in the autonomous
Kingdom of Poland until 1828, when he was the only member
of the Senate of the Polish Diet who voted for the death-penalty
at the trial of the Poles implicated in the Decembrist rising of 1825.
More than that, when the students of the University at Warsaw
deserted their lecture-rooms en masse to attend the funeral of the
patriotic Bielinski in the folio-wing year, Zygmunt Krasinski was
forbidden by his father to join them, and peremptorily ordered
to go to his work. This invidious isolation blasted Zygmunt's
youth and affected his whole career. He had to be removed from
the University, was sent with a tutor to Geneva in 1829, and never
saw Poland again save as a conquered province of Russia. His
father transferred his allegiance to Nicholas I, migrated to St.
Petersburg, was held in high honour by the Tsar and execrated
by his fellow-countrymen. Later on he effectually thwarted Zyg-
munt's desire to join in the rising of 1830, and by his persistence
forced him into a reluctant manage de convenance. Zygmunt
Krasinski was undoubtedly in a painful position, for he could not
openly declare himself without still further compromising his
father's position. He hated his "father's poUcy. but he loved the
man who had trained him to love his country, and, above all,
he feared him. It was a new and tragic variant on odi et amo,
which drove Zygmunt Krasinski into a strange life of compromise,
evasion, and sacrifice. To put it brutally, he was not a fighting
man ; so far as action went, he feared his father more than he
loved his country, and there was a sting of truth in the bitter taunt
addressed to him by his brother-poet Slowacki : ' Thou wert
afraid, son of a noble.' He was often conscious of his weakness
as when he wrote to Henry Reeve in 1830 : ' I am a fool, I am
a coward, I am a wretched being, I have the heart of a girl, I do
not dare to brave a father's curse.' But it is right to remember
that he was physically a weakling, tormented by ill-health, neurotic,
and half -blind from his nineteenth year. Torn in two by the conflict
between filial duty and the desire to serve his country, always
dreading the worst for himself, never free from the apprehension
that he would end hia-days in Siberia, he took refuge in anonymity
as the only means of salving his conscience and sparing his father.
The curious and self-protective devices by which he secured secrecy
were sometimes more ingenious than dignified. Some of his works
were put forth under the names or initials of his friends. The
secret was most loyally kept, but others suffered. According to
his biographer, his poems were penal contraband, and many of
his countrymen were sent to Siberia for possessing them. What
Krasinski sacrificed was fame, publicity, above all peace of mind.
He envied those of his contemporaries who fought and died for
their country. He was not a hero, and he knew it. The heroes

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND (contd.)

of his poems and plays were always soldiers, men of action, and
in his most original work, the extraordinary Undivine Comedy, he
levelled the most damaging indictment against the self-centred
egotism of the poet that has ever been penned by a man of letters.
And the bitterness of the portrait is only heightened by the fact
that it was largely inspired by self-criticism ; his letters and his
life afford only too frequent justification for the recurrent comment
of the mocking spirit in the play on the melodramatic pose of the
hero : ' Thou composest a drama.'

" The Undivine Comedy, a prose drama, though prompted by the
events of 1830, makes no mention of Poland. It is a double tragedy
in which the central figure, Henryk, after wrecking his home life by
his egotism, assumes the leadership of his class, aristocratic and
decadent, against a communistic rising led by Pankracy, a Mephis-
topheles who is not sure of himself. Henryk goes down in the
struggle, but his conqueror falls in the hour of triumph with the
words ' Vicisti Galilaee ' on his lips. The scenes from the domestic
tragedy are strangely moving : the sequel, in which the influence
of Faust is obvious, is chiefly noteworthy for the flashes of prescience
in which the Walpurgisnacht of brutal, revolting humanity fore-
shadows with a strange clairvoyance the outstanding features
of the democratic upheaval in Russia. But it is a drama of hopeless-
ness : ' the cry of despair,' as Mickiewicz caUed it, ' of a man
of genius who recognizes the greatness and difficulty of social
questions ' without being able to solve them. The Undivine
Comedy is ' the drama of a perishing world ' : it was only in his
later works that Krasinski's belief in the ultimate resurrection of
Poland emerged. In Iridion, another prose drama, we have his
first direct appeal to his nation, though it is cast in the form of an
allegorical romance, in which the men and women are rather
symbols than portraits. The hero is a Greek in Rome in the time
of Heliogabalus, Rome standing for Russia. Beginning with
this drama, and increasingly developed in his later poems, is to
be found Krasinski's abiding conviction that Poland's salvation
consists in the abjuring of vengeance — that the poUtical redemption
of the world would be achieved by her sufferings, as mankind was
redeemed by the sufferings of Christ. The agony of Poland was
not regarded by him as merited for any crimes in the past. She
was an innocent victim, and the greater the wrong inflicted on her,
the greater was the chance of her ultimate victory. In what was
the darkest hour of his life, in 1846, when the Galician peasantry,
incited by Austrian propagandists, rose and massacred the Polish
nobles and Austria annexed Cracow, he wrote : ' That last span
of earth torn from us by the fourth partition has more than anything
else advanced our cause. Every wound inflicted on something
holy and good becomes a far deeper wound, by the reflection of

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND {contd.)

the Divine Justice that rules history, on him who inflicted it.'
And again : ' There was never a nation in such sublime circum-
stances, in such favourable conditions, who was so near, from the
cross on which she hangs, to heaven whither she must ascend.'
It will be readily understood that this panegyric of suffering, coming
from a man who had not fought for his country or suffered forfeiture
of his wealth, did not appeal to all Pohsh patriots. The gospel
of pardon and the acceptance of pain revolted men like Kamienski
and Slowacki, who resented the tone of the Psalms of the Future,
in which Krasinski's distrust of democratic propaganda found
impassioned utterance. His appeal to his countrymen to adopt
the watchword of love and not that of terrorism was ineffective ;
but the catastrophe of 1846, though it shattered his health, did
not shatter his belief that Poland's resurrection depended on each
Pole's personal purity of heart and deed. His last national poems
are prayers for goodwill. In ' Resurrecturis ' his answer to the
eternal mystery of undeserved pain is that the ' quiet might of
sacrifice ' was ' the only power in the world which could crush
Poland's crushing fate,' As the late Professor Morfill well said
of him, Krasinski ' always stood by the open grave of his country,'
and the somewhat cloudy mysticism in which he found his chief
consolation is too rarefied for robuster minds. Yet his hope never
wholly failed : the saying that he quoted to encourage his friend
Soltan — ' speravit contra spent : that is a great and holy word ^ of
the sacred Scriptures ' — might stand for his motto ; and a saying
from one of his poems, as Miss Gardner not unjustly contends,
might well be his epitaph : ' If you would mark him out by any
sign, call him a Pole, for he loved Poland. In this love he lived
and in it died.'

" Krasinski died in Paris, where he had also been bom, in 1859,
only outliving his father by three months, in which he was engaged
on a memoir, never completed, in vindication of the memory of
the man who had dominated his earthly existence. He had many
devoted friends who advised and helped him, acted as his amanuenses,
and, as we have seen, shielded him by assuming authorship of his
works. In turn he was the generous friend of all Polish patriots
in distress, whatever were their politics. Deeply susceptible from
his boyhood, he was profoundly influenced by three women :
Mme. Bobrowa, to whom he dedicated his Undivine Comedy and
other works ; the beautiful and unhappy Countess Delphina Potocka,
immortaUzed by her friendship with Chopin, who both before and
for several years after Krasinski's marriage was his Egeria, and
to whom he inscribed a series of love lyrics and the mystical poem
' Dawn,' in which two exiles on the Lake of Como dream of the
resurrection of their nation. The idealistic nature of Krasinski's
love for Delphina Potocka, as compared with his infatuation for

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND (contd.)

Mme. Bobrowa, is emphasized by his latest biographer. She was
his Beatrice, and the figure of the woman he loved constantly
merges in that of his eternal mistress, Poland. The third woman
was his wife, Elibieta Branicka, whom he married reluctantly,
treated coldly for years, but came in the end to respect and love
for her goodness and forbearance, repairing his neglect in the beauti-
ful poems of repentance and gratitude addressed to her in the last
years of his troubled life. Miss Gardner's translations, especially
those from Krasinski's prose works, are done with spirit and no
little skill. The difficulties of the poems are greater, but she has
given us at any rate a good idea of their mystical eloquence. She
has made excellent use of the already extensive literature on the
subject, culminating in the complete edition of his works published
in 1912, the year of Krasinski's centenary. And she has drawn
freely from the remarkable letters written in French to Henry
Reeve, whom he met in Geneva in 1 830 — when Reeve was a romantic,
enthusiastic youth ' with the face of a beautiful girl ' — and
corresponded with for several years. More than sixty years later
these letters were handed over by Henry Reeve to Krasinski's
grandson, and published in Paris in 1902 with a Preface by Dr.
Kallenbach, of Lwow University, the chief authority on Krasinski."

KOSCIUSZKO

A BIOGRAPHY

KOSCIUSZKO

A BIOGRAPHY

BY

MONICA M. GARDNER

AUTHOR OF ''aDAM MICKIEWICZ " ; "POLAND; A STUDY IN NATIONAL
IDEALISM " ; " THE ANCSYMOUS POET OF POLAND," ETC.

rnxTTigniirwasiwr^LT!

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. i
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Firsl publisJied in igso

nuk^

(All rights resented)

\

TO

WIESi.AWA CICHOWICZOWNA

I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS

BOOK UPON THE NATIONAL

HERO OF HER

COUNTRY

PREFACE

The appearance of an English biography of the
PoHsh patriot, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, requires no
justification. Kosciuszko 's name is prominent in
the long roll-call of Polish men and women who
have shed their blood, sacrificed their happiness,
and dedicated their lives to gain the liberation of
Poland. We are now beholding what it was not
given to them to see, the fruit of the seed they
sowed — the restoration of their country to her
place in the commonwealth of the world. It is
therefore only fitting that at this moment we should
recall the struggle of one of the noblest of Polish
national heroes, whose newly risen country is the
ally of England and America, and whose young
compatriots fought with great gallantry by the
side of British and American soldiers in the war
that has effected the dehverance of Kosciuszko 's
nation.

M. M. G.

17

CONTENTS

Preface ....

Note ox the Pronunciation of
Names

CHAPTER

I. The Youth of Kosciuszko
II. The Fight for American Freedom

III. The Years of Peace

IV. The First Fight for Poland .
V. The Eve of the Rising

VI. The Rising of Kosciuszko — I.
VII. The Rising of Kosciuszko — II.
VIII. The Russian Prison
IX. Exile

List of Books Consulted
Index

PAGE
17

Polish

/

21

23
37
53
71

87

96

129

159

173
204
205

19

NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF-
POLISH NAMES

* C=ts.
C, ci, =a soft English ch.

Ch= strongly aspirated h, resembling ch in Scotch loch.

Cz=ch, as in charm.

Dz=j.

J=y-

L = a peculiarly PoUsh letter, roughly speaking to be pro-
nounced between u and w.

= 00, as in mood.

Rz = the French j, as in Jean.

i, si, =a slightly hissed and softened sound of sh.

W = v.

t, zi = French j.

The stress in Polish falls almost invariably on the penultimate
syllable.

21

KOSCIUSZKO

CHAPTER I

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO

I The great national uprisings of history have for
the most part gone down to time identified with
the figure of a people's hero : with some personality
which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize
and symbolize the character of a race. " I and my
nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam
Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not
shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native
country. " My name is Million, because I love
millions and for millions suffer torment." If to
this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an
unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an
extraordinary personal charm, the glamour of a
romantic setting, we have the pure type of a national
champion. Representative, therefore, in every sense
is the man with whose name is immortally asso-
ciated the struggle of the Polish nation for her
life — Tadeusz KosciuszkoJ

Kosciuszko was born on February 12, 1746, during
Poland's long stagnation under her Saxon kings.
The nation was exhausted by wars forced upon her
by her alien sovereigns. Her territories were the
passage for Prussian, Russian, and Austrian armies,

23

24 KOSCIUSZKO

traversing them at their will. With no natural
boundaries to defend her, she was surrounded by
the three most powerful states in Eastern Europe
who were steadily working for her destruction.
In part through her own impracticable constitution,
but in greater measure from the deUberate machina-
tions of her foreign enemies, whether carried on by
secret intrigues or by the armed violence of superior
force, Poland's poHtical Ufe was at a standstill, her
parhament obstructed, her army reduced. Yet at
the same time the undercurrent of a strong move-
ment to regeneration was striving to make itself
felt. Far-seeing men were busying themselves with
problems of reform ; voices were raised in warning
against the perils by which the commonwealth was
beset. New ideas were pouring in from France.
Efforts were being made by devoted individuals,
often at the cost of great personal self-sacrifice, to
amehorate the state of the peasantry, to raise the
standard of education and of culture in the country.
Under these conditions, in the last years of the inde-
pendence of Poland, passed the childhood and youth of
her future hberator.

Kosciuszko came of a class for which we have
no precise equivalent, that ranked as noble in a
country where at that time the middle classes were
unknown, and where the ordinary gentry, so long
as they had nothing to do with trade, showed patents
of nobihty, irrespective of means and standing. His
father, who held a post of notary in his Lithuanian
district and who owned more than one somewhat
modest • estate, was universally respected for his
upright character, which, together with his aptitude
for affairs, caused his advice and assistance to be

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 25

widely sought through the countryside. Kosciuszko ^
spent his boyhood in the tranquil, wholesome, out-
of-door hfe of a remote spot in Lithuania. The
home was the wooden one-storied dwelUng with
thatched, sloping roof and rustic veranda, in aspect
resembling a sort of glorified cottage, that long
after Kosciuszko's day remained the type of a Pohsh
country house. Kosciuszko's upbringing was of
the simplest and most salutary description. There
was neither show nor luxury in his home. The
family fortune had been left to his father in an
embarrassed condition : his father's care and dihgence
had for the time saved it. The atmosphere that sur-
rounded the young Kosciuszko was that of domestic
virtue, strict probity. He had before his eyes the
example of the devoted married hfe of his parents.
He went freely and intimately among the peasants
on his father's property, and thus learnt the strong
love for the people that dictated the laws he urged
upon his country when he became her- ruler.

Unpretending as was his father's household, its
practice was the patriarchal hospitahty that marked
the manners of the Poland of a century and a half
ago, as it does to-day. Friends and relations came
and went, always welcome, whether expected or un-
bidden. We have a dehcious letter from Kosciuszko's
mother, Tekla, to her husband on one of the numerous
occasions 3vhen he was away from home on business,
in which, fondly calUng him " my heart, the most
beloved Uttle dear Ludwik and benefactor of my
hfe," she begs him to send her wine, for her house
is filled with " perpetual guests," and will he try
and procure her some fish, if there is any to be had,
" because I am ashamed to have only barley bread

26 KOSCIUSZKO

on my table." ^ When accommodation failed in
the overcrowded house, the men slept in the barn.
In the day they hunted, shot, rode, or went off in
-parties, mushroom hunting. If to the pure and
unspoiled influence of his home Kosciuszko owes
something at least of the moral rectitude and devotion
to duty from which he neVer sweTved^, the cmmfry
life~oF Lithuania, with its freedom and its strange
charm, the Ufa that he loved above all others, has
probably a good deal to say to the si mplicity o f
nature and the straightness of o u tlooK that are
such "strongly mar^ed'^h'aracteristics m this son of
Lthe Lithuanian forests.

His early education was given him by his mother,
a woman of remarkable force of character and
practical capacity. Left a widow with four children
under age, of whom Tadeusz was the youngest,
she, with her clear head and untiring energy, managed
several farms and skilfully conducted the highly
complicated money matters of the family. Tadeusz's
home schooUng ended with his father's death when
the child was twelve _^ears_. old. "He then attended
the Jesuit iiollege at the chief town in his district,
Brzes^. He was a diUgent and clever boy who
loved his book and who showed a good deal of talent
for drawing. He left school with a sound classical
training and with an early developed passion for his
country. Already Timoleon was his favourite hero
of antiquity because, so he told a friend fifty years
later, " he was able to restore his nation's freedom,
taking nothing for himself."

In 1763 the long and dreary reign of Augustus III,

• T. Korzon, Kosciuszko. Cracow, 1894 ; later edition, 1906
(Polish).

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 27

the last Saxon king of Poland, came to an end.
Russian diplomacy, supported by Russian cannon,
placed Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, the lover
of Catherine II, upon the Polish throne in 1764.
The year following, Kosciuszko, an unknown boy
of nineteen years of age whose destiny was strangely
to coUide with that of the newly elected and last
sovereign of independent Poland, was entered in
the Corps of Cadets, otherwise called the Royal
SchoolTIn VTarsawT— Prince Adam Czartoryski, a
leading' member of the great family, so predominant
then in Polish politics that it was given the name of
" The Family " par excellence, frequently visited
Lithuania, where he held high miHtary command
and possessed immense estates. Young Tadeusz
attracted his interest, and it was through his influence
that the boy was placed in an establishment of which
he was the commandant and which, founded by the
King, who was related to the Czartoryskis, was under
immediate Royal patronage. Technically speaking,
the school was not a military academy, but the
education was largely military and the discipline
was on military lines. Above all, it was a school
for patriotism.

The admission of the candidate was in the nature
of a semi-chivalrous and national function, bearing
the stamp of the knightly and romantic traditions
of Poland. On the first day Kosciuszko was formally
presented to the commandant, to the officers and to
the brigade to which he was to belong. He embraced
'his new comrades, was initiated into the regulations
and duties of the life before him and examined upon
his capabilities. On the following day he gave in
his promise to observe the rules, and with a good

28 KOSCIUSZKO

deal of ceremony was invested with the deep blue
uniform of the cadet. But this was merely the
probation of the " novice," as the aspirant was
termed. A year's test followed, and then if judged
worthy the youth received in the chapel his final
enrolment. All his colleagues were present in full
dress carr3dng their swords. High Mass was sung,
which the " novice " heard kneeling and unarmed.
The chaplain then laid before him his high obhgation
to his country ; subsequently the proceedings were
adjourned to the hall or square, where the brigadier
proffered the neophyte's request for his sword.
With the brigadier's hand on his left arm, on his
right that of the sub-brigadier — the sub-brigadiers
being the senior students — the candidate was put
through a string of questions, reminiscent of those
administered to a probationer taking the religious
vows. One is typical : " Hast thou the sincere
resolve always to use this weapon which thou art
about to receive in defence of thy country and
thy honour ? " On the youth's reply, " I have no
other resolve," arms were presented, drums rolled,
and the senior officer girded the new soldier with
his sword, and placed his musket in his hand to
the accompaniment of moral formulas. The young
man then made a solemn promise not to disgrace
his comrades by any crime or want of application
to his duties. Led to his place in the ranks, he pre-
sented arms, each brigade marched away, led by
its brigadier, and the day concluded with a festive
evening.

The catechism that the cadet learnt by heart
and repeated every Saturday to his sub-brigadier —
it was written by Adam Czartoryski — was of the

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 29

same patriotic description. Next to the love of
God it placed the love of country. " Can the cadet
fear or be a coward ? " was one of its questions,
with the response, " I know not how to answer,
for both the word and the thing for which it stands
are unknown to me." This was no mere ornamental
flourish : for a dauntless courage is one of the most
distinctive characteristics of the Polish race, whether
of its sons or daughters. No opportunity was lost,
even in the textbooks of the school, to impress upon
the students' minds that above all their lives belonged
to Poland. Let them apply themselves to history,
said the foreword of an encyclopaedia that Adam
Czartoryski wrote expressly for them, so that they
shall learn how to rule their own nation ; to the
study of law, that they may correct the errors of
those lawgivers gone before them. " You who have
found your coimtry in this most lamentable condi-
tion must people her with citizens ardent for her
glory, the increase of her internal strength, her
reputation among foreigners, the reformation of
what is most evil in her government. May you,
the new seed, change the face of your country."

In this environment Kosciuszko spent the most
impressionable period of his youth. Early portraits
show us the winning, eager, mobile young face before
Kfe moulded it into the rugged countenance of the
PoUsh patriot, with its stern purpose and melancholy
enthusiasm, that Hves as the hkeness of Tadeusz
Kosciuszko. Even as a cadet Kosciuszko was
distinguished not merely for his abihty, but still
more for his dogged perseverance and fi^Jiity to duty.
Tradition sayT'th'at^" determined to put in all the
study that he could, he persuaded the night watch-

i\

30 KOSCIUSZKO

man to wake him on his way to light the staves at
three in the morning by pu]Hng a cord that Kosciuszko
tied to his left hand. His colleagues thought that
his character in its firmness and resolution resembled
that of Charles XII of Sweden, and nicknamed him
" Swede." Truth and sincerity breathed in his
every act and word. What he said he meant. What
he professed he did. The strength that was in him
was tempered by that p eculiar sweetness which was
native to him all his life, and which in later manhood
drew men as by magic to his banners, even as in
his school-days it won the respect and love of his
young comrades. The esteem in which his fellow-
cadets held him is illustrated by the fact that on an
occasion when they were mortally offended by some
slight put upon them at a ball in the town they chose
Kosciuszko as their spokesman to present their
grievances to the King, who took a personal interest
in the school. Something about the youth attracted
the brilliant, highly cultured sovereign, the man
who wavered according to the emotion or fear of
the moment between the standpoint of a patriot
or of a traitor. After that interview he often sent
for Tadeusz ; and when Kosciuszko passed out of
the school as one of its head scholars or officers,
he was recommended to Stanislas Augustus as a
recipient of what we should call a State travelUng
scholarship.

In 1768 Kosciuszko's mother died, leaving her
two daughters married, the eldest, spendthrift, and
most beloved son out on his own, and Tadeusz still
a cadet. With his mother's death Kosciuszko's
financial troubles began. For the greater part of
his life he never knew what it was to have a sufficiency

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 31

of means. His brother held the estate and apparently
the control of the family money, that was no consider-
able sum and had in latter years diminished. Public
affairs, moreover, were now assuming an aspect that
threatened the very existence of Kosciuszko's country.
Catherine II's minister, Repnin, with Russian armies
at his back, ruled the land. The Poles who stood
forward in a last despairing attempt to deUver their
country were removed by Russian troops to exile
and Siberia. Then in 1768 rose under the Pulaski
father and sons that gallant movement to save a
nation's honour that is known as the Confederation
of Bar. For four years the confederates fought in
guerilla warfare all over Poland, in forest, marsh,
hamlet, against the forces of Russia which held
every town and fortress in the country. These
things were the last that Kosciuszko saw of the old
Repubhc of Poland. In the company of his friend
Orlowski, who had been one of four cadets to receive
the King's stipend, he departed from his country in
1769 or 1770 with the intention of pursuing his
studies abroad.

Five years passed before Kosciuszko saw his native
land again. Very little is known to us of that stage
of his history. It is certain that he studied in the
school of engineering and artillery in M6zi^res and
conceivably in the Ecole Militaire of Paris. He
took private lessons in afchitecture from Perronet,
and followed up his strong taste for drawing and
painting. Sketches from his hand still remain,
guarded as treasures in Pohsh national museums.
French fortifications engaged his close attention,
and by the time he left France he had acquired the
skill in miUtary engineering that saved a campaign

32 KOSCIUSZKO

in the New World and that defended Warsaw in

the Old.

It is said that Kosciuszko prolonged his absence
abroad rather than return to see the enslavement
of his country without being able to raise a hand in
her defence. For in 1772 Russia, Austria, and Prussia
signed an agreement to partition Poland between
them, which, after a desperate resistance on the part
of the PoHsh Diet, was carried out in 1775. Austria
secured Gahcia, Prussia a part of Great Poland and,
with the exception of Thorn and Danzig, what has
since been known as " Prussian " Poland, while to
Russia fell the whole of Lithuania.

All this Kosciuszko watched from afar in helpless
rage and bitterness of soul. His peace of mind was
further destroyed by his increasing financial difficul-
ties. Little enough of his share of his father's fortune
could have remained to him, and he was. in debt.
The Royal subsidy had ceased when the treasury
was ruined by reason of the partition of Poland.
Moreover, Stanislas Augustus was never a sure source
on which to rely when it came to the question of
* keeping a promise or paying his dues. The_greater
part ofKosciuszko's career is that of a rnan pitted
against the weight of adve rse c ircumstance. It
was inevrtabTeTHaTIie who threw in his lot with an
unhappy country could have no easy passage through
life. In this he resembles more than one of the
national heroes of history ; but unhke many another,
he never_rea£b£d_thejesired goal. His is the
traged^f _a^plendid and forlorn hope. Even apart
from the story of his pubhc service his hfe was
dogged by disappointment and harassing care.
Somewhere in the year 1774 he at last returned

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 33

home. A youth of twenty-eight, possessed of striking
talent and freshly acquired science, he now, with
his fiery patriotism and character as resolute as
ardent, found himself in the country that he panted
to serve condemned to inaction of the most galling
description. The King who had been his patron
was the tool of Catherine II and through her of Russia.
Russian soldiers and officials overran even that
part of Poland which still remained nominally in-
dependent, but of which they were virtual masters.
There was no employment open to Kosciuszko.
A commission in the minute army that survived
the partition was only to be had by purchase, and
he had no money forthcoming. All that he could
do was to retire into the country, while he devoted
his energies to the thankless task of disentangling the
finances that the elder brother, Jozef Kosciuszko, was
squandering right and left in debts and dissipation.
The relations between this riotous brother and Tadeusz,
himself the most frugal and upright of j'ouths, were
so painful that the latter refused to remain in the
old home that had not yet gone, as it did later, to
Jozef 's creditors. He therefore in true PoHsh fashion
took up his abode in the houses of different kinsfolk,
often staying with his. married sisters, and especially
with that best beloved sister, Anna Estkowa. Between
him and her there was always the bond of a most
tender and intimate affection, to which their letters,
still preserved in Polish archives, bear eloquent
testimony.

At this time occurred the first love affair of the
hero, who never married. Among the manor-houses
that KosciuszkoT visited was that of Jozef Sosnowski.
He was Kosciuszko's kinsman and had been his

3

34 KOSCIUSZKO

father's friend. Tadeusz was a constant guest at
his house, giving lessons in drawing, mathematics,
and history, his favourite subjects, to the daughters
of tTTe^Tibuse by way of return for their father's
hospitahty. With one of these girls, Ludwika,
Kosciuszko fell in love. Various tender passages
passed between them, without the knowledge of
the parents but aided and abetted by the young
people of the family, in an arbour in the garden.
But another destiny was preparing for the lady.
The young and poor engineer's aspirations to her
hand were not tolerated by the father whose ambition
.had already led him into dealings that throw no
very creditable light on his patriotism, and that had
Kosciuszko known he would certainly never have
frequented his house. Over the gaming tables
Sosnowski had made a bargain with his opponent,
a palatine of the Lubomirski family, in which it
was arranged that the latter's son should marry
j^dwika Sosnowska. Getting wind of the Kosciuszko
romance, hFpnvately bade the girl's mother remove
her from the scenes ; and when one day Kosciuszko
arrived at the manor he found the ladies gone.

The bitter affront and the disappointment to
his affections were accepted by Kosciuszko \dth the
silent dignity that belonged to his character ; but
they played their part in driving him out of Poland.
Whether the story that Ludwika really fled to take
refuge from the detested marriage imposed upon
her in a convent, w^hence she was dragged by a ruse
and forced to the bridal altar, as long afterwards
she told Kosciuszko, was a romantic invention of
her own or an embroidery, after the fashion of her
century, on some foundation of fact, it is impossible

. THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO 35

to say ; but it is certain that through her unhappy
married life she clung fondly to the memory of her
first and young lover. So long after the rupture
as fourteen j^ears his name was a forbidden topic
between herself and her mother, and at a critical
moment in Kosciuszko's career we shall find her
stepping in to use her rank and position with Stanislas
Augustus on his behalf.

With home, fortune, hopes of domestic happiness,
all chance of serving his country, gone, Kosciuszko
determined to seek another sphere. He left Poland
in the autumn of 1775.

Poverty constrained him to make the journey in
the cheapest manner possible. He therefore went
down the Vistula in a barge, one of the picturesque
flat-bottomed craft that still ply on Poland's greatest
river — the river which flows through two of her
capitals and was, it is well said, partitioned with the
land it waters from the Carpathians to the Baltic,
On his way down the river he would, observes his
chief Polish biographer, have seen for the first time,
and not the last, the evidence before his eyes that
his country lay conquered as his boat passed the
Prussian cordon over waters that once were Polish.
Thus he came down to the quaint old port of Danzig,
with its stately old-world burgher palaces and heavily
carved street doors, then still Poland's, but which
Prussia was only biding her time to seize in a fresh
dismemberment of Polish territory.

Dead silence surrounds the following six months
of Kosciuszko's life. Every probability points to
the fact that he would have gone to Paris, where he
had studied so long and where he had many friends
and interests. The envoys from America were there

36 KOSCIUSZKO

on the mission of enlisting the help of France in the
conflict of the States with Great Britain. We do
not know whether Kosciuszko became personally
acquainted with any of them. At all events the
air was full of the story of a young country striving
for her independence ; and it is not surprising that
when next the figure of Kosciuszko stands out clearly
in the face of history it is as a volunteer offering his
sword to the United States to fight in the cause of
freedom.

CHAPTER II

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM

In the early summer of 1776 Kosciuszko crossed
the Atlantic on the journey to America that was
then in the hkeness of a pilgrimage to a wholly
strange land. He found the country palpitating in
the birth-throes of a nation rising to her own. Not
only was she carrying on the contest with Great
Britain by arms, but democratic resolutions, appeals
for freedom for all men, were being read in the
churches, proclaimed at every popular gathering.
What a responsive chord all this struck in Kosciuszko 's
heart we know from his subsequent history.

His best documented historian ruthlessly dis-
misses the story that the Pole presented him.self to
Washington with the one request that he might
fight for American independence, and that in reply
to Washington's query, " What can I do for you ? "
his terse reply was, " Try me." As a matter of fact
he appHed to the Board of War, and his first employ-
ment was in the old Quaker city of Philadelphia
where, in company with another foreign engineer,
a Frenchman, he was put to work fortifying the
town against the British fleet's expected attack by
the Delaware. These fortifications of his devising

still remain. They gained for him his nomination

37

38 KOSCIUSZKO

by Congress as engineer in the service of the States
and the rank of colonel.

After some months passed in Philadelphia, Kos-
ciuszko was taken over by Gates for the northern
army, and sent to report upon the defences of*
Ticonderoga and Sugar Loaf Hill. Gates highly
approved of his proposed suggestion of building a
battery upon the summit of Sugar Loaf Hill ; but
at this moment Gates was relieved of his command,
and Kosciuszko's ideas were set aside for those of
native Americans to whom his plan was an unheard-
of innovation. The authorities soon saw their mis-
take. " For the love of God let Kosciuszko return
here," wrote Wilkinson when sent by the commander
to inspect the work, " and as quickly as possible."
But it was then too late. The English fleet was on
Lake Champlain, and Kosciuszko's design was
vindicated by the British carrying it out themselves.
He, meanwhile, was fortifying Van Schaick, with the
result that the army of the States, retreating in
disorder before Burgoyne, could retire on a safe
position, Kosciuszko's personal privations and dis-
comforts were considerable. He did not so much
as possess a blanket, and had perforce to sleep with
Wilkinson under his. He was then sent on by
Gates, who was again in command, to throw up
fortifications in the defence of Saratoga.

With justifiable pride the Poles point to the part
played by their national hero in the victory at
Saratoga which won for America not only the cam-
paign, but her recognition as an independent nation
from Louis XVL The Americans on their side
freely acknowledged that Kosciuszko's work turned
the scale in their favour. Gates modestly diverted

\

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 39

the flood of congratulations of which he was the
recipient by the observation that " the hills and
woods were the great strategists which a young
Polish engineer knew how to select with skill for
my camp " ; and his official report to Congress
states that " Colonel Kosciuszko chose and en-
trenched the position," Addressing the President
of Congress at the end of the year 1777, Washington,
speaking of the crying necessity of engineers for the
army, adds : " I would take the liberty to mention
that I have been well informed that the engineer
in the northern army (Kosciuszko I think his name
is) is a gentleman of science and merit." ^ The plan
of the fortifications that saved Saratoga is preserved
in Kosciuszko 's own hand among Gates's papers,
and traces of them could as late as 1906 be still
discerned among beds of vegetables.

That winter of the war — 1777-1778 — was famous
for its length and its intolerable severity. The
American soldiers suffered from all the miseries of
hunger and cold and insufficient pay, Kosciuszko, to
whom the piercing rigour of the climate must have
seemed as a familiar visitant from his northern
Lithuanian home, was on the borders of Canada
when he heard of the arrival in Trenton of a Pole,
famous, as Kosciuszko himself as yet was not, in
the national records of Poland — Kazimierz Pulaski.
With his father, brothers, and cousin, Pulaski had
led the war of the Bar Confederation, He alone
survived his family. His father died in prison,
suspected by his confederates ; his brothers fell in
battle, or in their turn breathed their last in prison.
Ignorant of fear and gaily risking all for his country,

' Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington. Boston, 1847.

40 KOSCIUSZKO

Kazimierz carried on the struggle without them.
Pursued on all sides by the Russians, he performed
almost incredible feats of doubhng and unheard-of
marches : leading his troops in the Ukrainian
steppes, escaping to the Carpathians, reappearing
in Great Poland, fighting on until the last doomed
defence of Czenstochowa, after which he was seen
no more in Poland. In, Paris he met Benjamin
Franklin and other envoys of the States, and, like
Kosciuszko, he set sail to fight for liberty in the
New World.

AfChristmas time in that bitter winter Kosciuszko
came out on furlough through the wild snowbound
land to Trenton, impelled by desire to see the Pole
whom he knew well by repute, and by the craving
to hear news of his country from the first compatriot
who had come across his path in the New World.
They had not known each other in Poland, for
Kosciuszko had been a youth engaged in his studies
at home and abroad while the Bar confederates
were fighting ; but for the love of Poland they met
as brothers. Kosciuszko stayed ten days with
Pulaski and his Polish companion, entertained,
despite their poverty, in true Pohsh style, and then
returned to his quarters. Probably on the way
to or from Trenton he turned aside to Valley Forge
to make the acquaintance of Lafayette, who had
come over to America with Pulaski, and it is possible
that on this occasion he may have met Washington.
He never saw Pulaski again, for, leading a headlong
charge with the fiery impetus of the Polish knight
of old, the leader of Bar fell at Savannah in October
1779.

The question of the defence of the Hudson was

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 41

now being agitated. West Point, the so-called
Gibraltar of the Hudson, was chosen for its com-
manding position on the heights above the river,
and the work of fortifying it was finally conferred,
over the head of the French engineer, Radiere, upon
Kosciuszko. " Mr. Kosciuszko," wrote McDougall,
the general now in command of the northern army,
to Washington, Gates being employed at the Board
of War, " is esteemed by those who have attended
the works at West Point to have more practice
than Colonel Radiere, and his manner of treating
the people is more acceptable than that of the latter ;
which induced General Parsons and Governor CHnton
to desire the former may be continued at West Point." ^
Washington acceded to McDougall's request and
confirmed the appointment to the Pole, not only
because he was the cleverer engineer, but especially,
adds Washington, because " you say Kosciuszko
is better adapted to the genius and temper of the
people."^ A few months later Washington ordered
Kosciuszko to submit his plans to the approval of
an inferior officer. Kosciuszko, who never sought'
distinction or pushed his own claims, did not permit
himself to resent what was, in fact, a sHght ; but
quietly went forward in his own thorough and pains-
taking manner with the business entrusted to him.
Kosciuszko's work at West Point was the longest
and the most important of his undertakings in the
United States, and is inseparably connected in the
American mind with his name. Little is now left
of his fortifications ; but the monument raised in
his honour by the American youth, with the inscrip-

I Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.
» Ibid.

42 KOSCIUSZKO

tion : " To the hero of two worlds " remains, a grate-
ful tribute to his memory. That the military
students of the United States can look back to West
Point as their Alma Mater is in great measure
Kosciuszko's doing. When it was first resolved
to found a training school in arms for the young
men of the States, Kosciuszko urged that it should
be placed at West Point, and suggested the spot
where it now stands.

Kosciuszko was at West Point for two years.
Here, if we do not accept the legends and conjectures
of former meetings, he met Washington for the first
time. He had two thousand five hundred work-
men under him, whom he treated with the courtes}^
and consideration that always distinguished his
dealings with his fellow-men, whether his equals or
subordinates. The story goes that with his own
" hands, assisted by his American workmen, he built
himself some sort of cottage or shanty in the hope
of one day receiving his own countrymen as his
guests. One of his modern Polish biographers often
heard in his youth a song purporting to be Kos-
ciuszko's composition, with the tradition that he
had composed it to his guitar — he played both the
guitar and the violin — on the arrival of Polish
visitors. I The doggerel, kindly little verses, express
the hope that everything his compatriots see in his
modest house will be as agreeable to them as their
company is to their host, and inform them that he
raised its walls with the purpose of welcoming them
therein. It is a fact that, true to the Pole's passion
for the soil, he laid out a little garden, still known

I F. Rychlicki, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Partition of Poland.
Cracow, 1875 (Polish).

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 48

as " Kosciuszko's Garden," where he loved to spend
his leisure hours, alone with his thoughts of Poland.
Times were hard at West Point and provisions scanty.
Washington himself could not sufficiently furnish
his table, and Kosciuszko naturally fared worse ;
but out of the pay that he could ill afford and from
his own inadequate stores the Pole constantly sent
provisions to the English prisoners, whose misery
was extreme. It is said, indeed, that had it not
been for Kosciuszko's succour our prisoners would
have died of want. Many years later a Pole, who
collected the details of Kosciuszko's American ser-
vice, fell sick of fever in. Australia. An EngHsh
shopkeeper took him into his house and tended him
as though he were his own — for the reason that he
was a compatriot of the man who had saved the
hfe of the Enghshman's grandfather when the latter
was a starving prisoner at West Point.

The West Point episode of Kosciuszko's career
came to its end in the summer of 1780, when he
asked Washington to transfer him to the southern
army. The motive of the request was that, with-
out having given Kosciuszko notice, Washington
had removed a number of his workmen. The corre-
spondence that passed between them was courteous
but dry, Kosciuszko avoiding acrimonious expres-
sions, and simply stating that under the present
conditions he could no longer carry on the work at
West Point. The relations between the liberator of
America and the champion of Poland's freedom were,
indeed, never of the nature exacted by romance.
They were confined to strict necessity, and held
none of the affection that marked the intercourse
of Gates and Nathaniel Greene with their Polish

44 KOSCIUSZKO

engineer. The precise reason of this is hard to
fathom. It has been ascribed to Kosciuszko's
intimacy with Gates, Washington's adversary, or,
again, to Kosciuszko's extreme reserve — which latter
conjecture, in view of the warm and enduring
friendships that the hero of Poland won for him-
self in the New World, seems untenable.

Gates, now nominated to the command of the
southern army, had at once requested that Ko^-
ciuszko should be sent to him. " The perfect
qualities of that Pole," he wrote to Jefferson, " are
now properly appreciated at headquarters, and
may incline other personages to putting obstacles
against his joining us ; but if he has once promised
we can_depend^ upon him."

Washington gave the required permission, to
which Kosciuszko replied from West Point on
August 4th :

" The choice your Excellency was pleased to
give me in your letter of yesterday is very kind ;
and, as the completion of the works at this place
during this campaign, as circumstances are, will
be impossible in my opinion, I prefer going to the
southward to continuing here. I beg you to favour
me with your orders, and a letter of recommen-
dation to the Board of War, as I shall pass through
Philadelphia. I shall wait on your Excellency to
pay due respects in a few days." ^

A French engineer took Kosciuszko's place, and
the latter had not long left when the treachery of
the new commandant of West Point, Arnold, was
disclosed by the capture of Andre. Before Kosciuszko
had time to reach the southern army his old friend

' Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 45

Gates was defeated at Camden, and in consequence
disgraced. Nathaniel Greene, after Washington the
greatest general of the American Revolution, was
appointed his successor. While awaiting Greene's
arrival to take up his command Kosciuszko was
for some time in Virginia among the planters. He
thus saw the coloured slaves at close quarters, and
was brought face to face with the horrors of the
slave trade. It was probably then that, with his
strong susceptibiUty to every form of human suffer-
ing, he learnt that profound sympathy for the
American negro which, seventeen years later, dic-
tated his parting testament to the New World.

Through the whole campaign of the Carolinas,
the most brilHant and the most hardly won of the
American War, Kosciuszko was present. When
Greene arrived he found himself at the head of an
army that was starving. His troops had literally
not enough clothing required for the sake of decency.
He was without money, without resources. He
resolved to retire upon the unknown Pedee river.
Immediately upon his arrival he sent Kosciuszko
up the river with one guide to explore its reaches
and to select a suitable spot for a camp of rest,
charging him with as great celerity as he could
compass. Kosciuszko rapidly acquitted himself of
a task that was no easy matter in that waste of
forest and marsh. In the words of an American
historian : " The surveying of the famous Kos-
ciuszko on the Pedee and Catawba had a great
influence on the further course of the campaign."
The campaign was carried on in a wild country of
deep, roaring rivers, broken by falls, and often
visited by sudden floods. The frequently impassable

46 KOSCIUSZKO

swamps breathed out poisonous exhalations. Rattle-
snakes and other deadly reptiles lurked by the
wayside. Great were the hardships that Kosciuszko,
together Avith the rest of the army, endured. There
were no regular suppHes of food, tents and blankets
ran out, the soldiers waded waist-deep through
rushing waters. Often invited to Greene's table,
where the general entertained his officers with a
kindliness and cordiality that atoned for the poor
fare which was all that he could offer them, Kos-
ciuszko was regarded with strong affection and
admiration by a man who was himself worthy of
the highest esteem. Kosciuszko's office, after the
survey of the river, was to build boats for the perilous
transport of the armjr over the treacherous and
turbulent streams of the district. Greene writes :
" Kosciuszko is emplo^^ed in building fiat-bottomed
boats to be transported with the army if ever I
shall be able to command the means of transporting
them." ^ The boats of Kosciuszko's devising con-
tributed to the saving of Greene's army in that
wonderful retreat from Cornwallis, which is among
the finest exploits of the War of Independence.
Again his skill came prominently forward when
Greene triumphantly passed the Dan with Cornwalhs
on his heels, and thus definitely threw off the British
pursuit. Kosciuszko was then despatched to fortify
Halifax, but was soon recalled to assist in the siege
of Ninety Six, a fort built with heavy stockades
originally as a post of defence against the Red
Indians. The night before the siege began Greene
with Kosciuszko surveyed the English works. It

» William Johnson, Sketches of the Life and Correspondence oj
Nathaniel Greene. Charleston, 1822.

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 47

was dark and rainy, and they approached the enemy
so close that they were challenged and fired at by
the sentries. The mining operations that Kosciuszko
directed were of an almost insuperable difficulty,
and his Virginian militiamen struck. By his per-
suasive and sympathetic language Kosciuszko ralhed
them to the work ; but finally Greene abandoned
the siege.

When the campaign changed to guerilla warfare
Kosciuszko fought as a soldier, not as an engin'feer.
At the battle of Eutaw Springs, where the licence
of the American soldiers pillaging the British camp
and murdering the prisoners lost Greene a decisive
victory, we hear of Kosciuszko as making desperate
attempts to restrain a carnage which horrified his
humane feehngs, and personally saving the Hves
of fifty Enghshmen, Peace and the defeat of
Great Britain were in the air, but hostilities still
dragged on, and Kosciuszko fought through 1782
near Charleston with distinction. After the gallant
Laurens had fallen, his post of managing the secret
intelligence from Charleston passed to Kosciuszko.
" Kosciuszko's innumerable communications," says
the grandson and biographer of Greene, " exhibit
the industry and intelligence \vith which he dis-
charged that service." ^ Kosciuszko possessed all
the Pohsh daring and Jove of adv enture. He would Cl

sally forth to^carrjTblTthe^nglisir'horses and cattle
that were sent to pasture under guard, protected
by English guns from the fort. He succeeded in
capturing horses, but the cattle were too closely
protected. Or, accompanied by an American officer

• George Washington Greene, Life of Nathaniel Greene. New
York, 1 87 1.

48 KOSCIUSZKO

named Wilmot, he would cross the river to watch
or harry the EngHsh on James' Island. One of
these expeditions, when Kosciuszko and his com-
panion attacked a party of English woodcutters,
has the distinction of being the last occasion on
which blood was shed in the American War. They
were surprised by an ambuscade, and Wilmot was
killed. At length Charleston fell. On December 14,
1782, the American army entered the town in a
triumphal procession, in which Kosciuszko rode
with his feliow-ofhcers, greeted by the populace
with flowers and fluttering kerchiefs and cries of
" Welcome ! " and " God bless you ! " Greene's wife,
a sprightly lady who kept the camp ahve, had joined
him outside Charleston. Her heart was set on
celebrating the evacuation of Charleston by a ball,
and, although her Quaker husband playfully com-
plained that such things were not in his line, she
had her way. The ball-room was decorated by
Kosciuszko, who adorned it with festoons of mag-
nolia leaves and with flowers cunningly fashioned
of paper.

Peace with England was now attained. Kosciuszko
had fought for six years in the American army.
The testimony of the eminent soldier in whose
close companionship he had served, whose hard-
ships he had shared, whose warmest friendship
he had won, that of Nathaniel Greene, best sums
up what the Pole had done for America and what
he had been to his brother-soldiers. " Colonel
Kosciuszko belonged " — thus Greene — " to the num-
ber of my most useful and dearest comrades in
arms. I can liken to nothing his zeal in the pubhc
service, and in the solution of important problems

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 49

nothing could have been more helpful than his
jiidgment, vigilance and diligence. In the execution
of niy recommendations in every department of
the service he was always eager, capable, in one
word impervious against every temptation to ease,
unwearied by any labour, fearless of every danger.
He was greatly distinguished for his unexampled
modesty and entire unconsciousness that he had
done anything unusual. He never manifested desires
or claims for himself, and never let any opportunity
pass of calling attention to and recommending the
merits of others." ^ All those who had been thrown
together with him in the war speak in much the
same manner. They notice his sweejtness and up-
rightness of soul, his high-mindedness and delicate
instincts, his careful thought for the men under
his command. Even Harry Lee (" Light Horse
Harry "), while carping at Kosciuszko's talents, to
the lack of which, with no justification, he ascribes
Greene's failure before Ninety Six, renders tribute
to his engaging qualities as a comrade and a man.
But Kosciuszko's services did not in the first instance
receive the full recognition that might have been
expected from the new Republic. He alone of all
the superior officers of the Revolution received
no^jpromotion other than that given wholesale^y
Congress, and was forced to apply personally to
Washington to rectify the omission. In language
not too cordial, Washington presented his request to
Congress, which conferred upon Kosciiiszko the rank
of brigadier-general with the acknowledgment of
its " high sense of his long, faithful and meritorious
services." The recently founded patriotic Society

I T. Korzon, KoUiuszko,
4

50 KOSCIUSZKO

of the Cincinnati, of which Washington was the first
president, elected Kosciuszko as an honoured member.
Its broad blue and white ribbon carrying a golden
eagle and a representation of Cincinnatus before
the Roman Senate, with the inscription : " Omnia
relinquit servare Rempublicam," is often to be seen
in the portraits of Kosciuszko, suspended on his
breast,

Kosciuszko was now a landowner of American
soil, by virtue of the grant by Congress of so many
acres to the officers who had fought in the war.
Friendship, affluence, a tranquil life on his own
property, that most alluring of prospects to a son
of a race which loves Mother Earth with an intense
attachment, lay before him in the New World.
To him nothing was worth the Poland that he had
left as an obscure and disappointed youth.

For all these years his heart had clung to the
memory of his native land. On the rocks of West
Point he had walked in solitude under the trees
of his garden, and sat by the fountain which is still
shown, yearning with an exile's home-sickness for
his country. At times, probably very rarely in
days of long and difficult transit and when com-
munications for a fighting-line were doubly un-
certain, letters crossed between Kosciuszko and
friends in far-off Poland. " Two years ago I had
a letter from him," wrote Adam Czartoryski in 1778,
as he requested Benjamin Franklin to ascertain
what had become of the youth in whom he had
been interested ; " but from that time I have heard
nothing of him." ^ Some sort of correspondence
was carried on by Tadeusz with a friend and neigh-

I T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM 51

bour of his in his old home, Juhan Niemcewicz, the
poet and future pohtician, lateFtTr''&e~ECosciuszko's
companion in the Rising and his fellow-prisoner
and exile. Niemcewicz, wrote the Princess Lubo-
mirska who had been Ludwika Sosnowska, to
Kosciuszko in America, " has told me that you
are alive, he gave me your letter to read, and I
in my turn hasten to tell you through Julian that
in my heart I am unalterably and till death yours." ^

This letter, the same in which the lady gives the
remarkable account of her marriage to which we
have already alluded, left Kosciuszko cold. That
chapter was entirely put away from him. The
first and hopeless romance of his youth had naturally
enough been driven off the field by stirring and
strenuous action in a new hemisphere. Even had
this not been the case, Kosciuszko was of too high
a moral mould to cherish a passion for a married
woman. His relations with_JJie__.Qther sex were !
always of the rnost delicate, most courteous and
most chivalrous ; but, admired and honoured by
women as he invariably was, they in reality enter
but little in his life.

Now that the war had ended Kosciuszko only
waited to wind up his affairs in America, and then
he could keep away from his country no longer.
He started for Europe in July 1784, landed in
France, and by way of Paris reached Poland in the
same year. From America he brought an enhanced
attraction to the democratic ideas that were gaining
vogue in Europe, and wnich fiaJST had a hold over
him from his youth. Still more, he had seen with
his own eyes the miracle of a national struggle.

I op. cit.

52 KOSCIUSZKO

He had fought and marched side by side with ragged,
starving, undisciplined, unpaid men who had carried
off the victory against a powerful nation and a
regular army. With that memory burnt into his
soul, ten years later he led a more desperate throw
for a freedom to him incomparably dearer — his
country's.

#

CHAPTER III

THE YEARS OF PEACE

When Kosciuszko returned to his native land, that
great wave of a nation's magnificent effort to save
herself by internal reform, which culminated in the
Constitution of the 3rd of May, was sweeping over
Poland. Equality of civic rights, freedom of the
peasant, a liberal form of government, political and
social reforms of all descriptions, were the questions
of the hour. The first Commission of Education to
be established in Europe, the precursor of our modern
Ministry of Education, that had been opened two
years before Kosciuszko left Poland, and on which
sat Ignacy Potocki and Hugo KoHontaj, both after-
wards to be closely associated with Kosciuszko in
his war for national independence, was, founding
schools, refounding universities, and raising the level
of education all through the country. Roads were
built, factories started, agriculture and trade given
fresh impetus. A literary and artistic revival set
in, warmly encouraged by Stanislas Augustus, who
gathered painters, musicians, and poets around him
in his brilHant court. All this was done by a dis-
membered nation upon whose further and complete
destruction the three powers that had already

partitioned her were resolved.

53

54 KOSCIUSZKO

Coincident with these last days of Poland's political
existence that hold the tragic glory of a setting sun
is the oue tranquil span^ oi Kosciuszka'sjife. His
sister's husbandlTad managed his affairs so gener-
ously and so well that his old home had been saved
for him. Here Kosciuszko for four years led the
retired life which was most to his taste, that of a
country farmer and landowner in a small way, his
peace only disturbed by the financial worries handed
on to him by his brother.

Soldierly simplicity was the note of Kosciuszko 's
rustic countr}^ home. The living-room was set out
with a plain old table, a few wooden seats and an
ancient store cupboard. The furniture of the small
sleeping apartment consisted of a bed and by its
side a table on which lay Kosciuszko 's papers and
books, conspicuous among the latter being the
political writings of the great contemporary Polish
reformers — Staszyc and Kollontaj — which to the
Pole of Kosciuszko 's temperament were bound to
be fraught with burning interest. His coffee was
served in a cup made by his own hand ; the simple
dishes and plates that composed his household stock
were also his work, for the arts and crafts were
always his favourite hobbies. Ah old cousin looked
after the housekeeping. A coachman and man-
servant were the only other members of the family.
There was a garden well stocked with fruit-trees
that was the delight of Kosciuszko 's heart. On a
hillock covered with hazels he laid out walks, put
up arbours and arranged a maze that wound so
craftily among the thicket that the visitor who
entered it found no easy exit. The maze may still
be seen, together with the avenue of trees that

THE YEARS OF PEACE

55

was planted by Kosciuszko himself. His interest
in his domain jwas unfailing. When far away from
home, in the midst of his military preoccupations,
while commanding in the Polish army, he wrote
minute directions to his sister on the importation
of fresh trees, the sowing of different grains on the
farm.

Although Kosciuszko was an ardent farmer,

his farm brought him no great returns ; an^ this
by reason of the sacrifices that he made to his prin-
ciples. As a Polish landowner he had manj^ peasants
working on his property. By the legislation of that
day, common to several countries besides Poland,
these peasants were to a great extent under his
power, and were compelled to the corvee. Such a
condition of things was intolerable to Kosciuszko.
The sufferings of his fellow-men, equal rights for all,
were matters that ever touched him most nearly.
Many others of his countrymen were earnestly
setting their faces against this abuse of serfdom
and, even before the measure was passed by law,
as far as possible liberating the serfs on their estates.
That at this time Kosciuszko entirely freed some
of his peasants appears certain. It was not then
prjacticable to give full freedom to the remainder ;
buflTe reduced the forced labour of all the men on
his property by one-half, and that of the women
he abolished altogether. His personal loss was con-
siderable. He was not a rich man. His stipend from
America, for one cause or another, never reached
him, and thanks to his brother his private means
were in so involved a condition that he had to
summon his sister to his help and contract various
loans and debts.

.^

56 KOSCIUSZKO

This favourite sister, Anna Estkowa, lived not far,
as distances go in Poland, from Kosciuszko's home.
She and her husband and son were often guests in
Kosciuszko's house, and he in hers. She frequently
had to come to his rescue in housekeeping emergencies,
and the correspondence between them at times takes
a very playful note. " Little sister," or " My own
dear Httle sister," alternates with the title used by
the brother in jest : " Your right honourable lady-
ship." Or again he calls her by epithets remarkable
to the Enghsh ear, but which in Lithuania are terms
of close intimacy, and correspond to the rough and
endearing language of a fondly attached brother
and sister in our own country. He sends her a
packet of China tea or a wagon filled with barley
that was forced to turn back on account of the bad
state of the roads ; while she is requested to buy
him " about four bottles of Enghsh beer : I will
pay you back when I see you." Sometimes she is
treated to a friendly scolding when she fails to fulfil
Kosciuszko's commissions to his liking.

" I particularly beg you to try and get [some
furniture he required] from that joiner and send
it to me on the first of May, or even sooner. . . .
Come and stay with me in May. I will give you
something to busy yourself with, and to keep you
in health. You must send some money to Stanislas
[her son, who was staying with Kosciuszko], and
enjoin upon him to manage with it, but it would be
better if he always had some in store. You are a
cow : and why did you not buy more almonds in
their shells, or at least four spoons ? " ^

" My Saint Anna "—thus he addresses her on

I Letters of Kosciuszko, edited by L. Siemienski, Lwow, 1877 (Polish).

THE YEARS OF PEACE 57

another occasion : " I have sent my carts for the
chairs and sofas. ... I present my humble respects
to the Stolnik [his brother-in-law], and I beg him
to let himself be persuaded to come and stay for
a time with me, if only to smoke one pipe over my
hearth. I beg you both to buy me two fine cows.
Good-bye, lapwings." ^

■' Little sister of mine," he writes most tenderly
after her husband's death : " come to me, I beg
you. Take a carriage to Brzesc. I shall be there
on Sunday for my cure, as Miiller ordered me to go
there. Otherwise I would go to you. You must
let yourself be ruled by reason. You are in bad
health, I am in bad health : do you wish to drive
me into the grave by your extravagant conduct ?
You must watch over your health for the sake of
your children, for my sake." ^

Kosciuszko loved his retirement, and was happiest
in his own cherished gafdeiT; but he by no means
led the life of a hermit, and was fond of visiting the
country houses of his friends in the sociable open-
hearted manner of his race. His frank kindliness
and courtesy made him a welcorhe guest ; and
the favourite amusement of the soldier who had
gained fame in the New World was to play " blind
man's buff " and other youthful games with the
young people of the house.

One of the manors that he frequented was that
of Michal Zaleski, a legal and political functionary
of some importance in Lithuania. With him and
his wife Kosciuszko contracted a lasting friendship.

" I will begin " — so runs a letter of his to Mme.
Zaleska — " first of all by reproaching your ladyship
' op. cit. * Ibid.

58 KOSCIUSZKO

for not having added even one word to the letter "
— presumably her husband's. " A fine way of
remembering your neighbour ! So I have only
got to hurry home to be forgotten by my friends !
I will forbid any more of my water to be given to
you, and will entirely prohibit my well ; so you
will have to drink from your own, made badly by
your husband. I lay my curse on your ladyship
and will show you no mercy ; and if I should be
in the church on Good Friday you would most
certainly be denied absolution for your great and
heinous sins. However, I kiss your hands, and be
both of you convinced of the enduring respect and
esteem with which I desire to be your humblest
servant." ^

" Oh, would that I could obtain such a wife ! " he
writes to the husband. " She is an example for
thousands — how to find happiness at home with
husband and children. What month were you
born in ? If my birthday were in the same month,
then I too might venture to marry." 2

Although Kosciuszko lived far from the turmoil of
publicity and out of the reach of events, his thoughts,
as we know from his letters and from rough notes
that exist in his handwriting, were much taken up
with the crisis through which his country was
passing. He pondered much upon the means of
her preservation. His correspondence with Michal
Zaleski insists upon the necessity for Poland of
national self-consciousness and confidence in her
own destiny. Education for the masses, a citizen
army of burghers and peasants, were two of the

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.
2 Letters of Kosciuszko.

THE YEARS OF PEACE 59

reforms for which Kosciuszko most earnestly longed,
and in which, in advance of his epoch, he saw a
rem£d^LjQr_crYing__£,vils. It was a moment when
the attention of thoughtful men was riveted on
great national problems, for the famous Diet was
now sitting that from i^SS^to 1791 was engaged in
the task of framing for Poland the enlightened Con-
stitution that, were it not for the armies of Prussia
and Russia, would have saved her. One of its early
enactments was the remodelling of the Polish army.
Kosciuszko's standing was now for the first time
to be publicly recognized by the Government of
his country, and his talent impressed into her
service. His old love, the Princess Lubomirska, here
reappears in his history, writing a letter to the King,
with the request that Kosciuszko should be given
a military command. If to the modern reader it
comes with something of a shock, as Korzon remarks,
that a woman considered her intervention needed
to push the claims of a soldier who had so greatly
distinguished himself, we must remember that Kos-
ciuszko was then scarcely known in Poland. His
service had been foreign ; he belonged to a quiet
country family that had nothing to do with affairs
of state. Apart from the Princess's propaganda,
of which we hear nothing further, Kosciuszko's
name was sent up for recommendation to the Grand
Diet, and the Lithuanian magnate who proposed it
spoke before the Diet of Kosciuszko as a man ''_who
possesses high personal qualities, and, as he learnt
to shed his blood for a foreign country, will assuredly
not grudge it to his own." Kosciuszko was present ;
and as he heard these words he politely rose and
bowed. Kosciuszko was no frequenter of courts or

60 KOSCIUSZKO

lover of palaces ; but his interests obliged him to
present himself to the King, who remembered him
as the promising j^outh to whom his favour had
been given when a cadet. The upshot of all this
was that he received the commission of major-
general in the PoUsh army on the ist of October, 1789.

His first command was in the country districts
of Great Poland, close to the frontiers of that part
of Poland which since the first partition had been
under Prussian dominion. It was a keen disappoint-
ment to Kosciuszko that his appointment was in
the army of Poland proper, the so-called Crown
army, instead of in that of his native Lithuania.
That wild and romantic land of marsh and forest
which the poetry of her great singer, Adam
Mickiewicz, has made live for ever in Polish htera-
ture, casts a spell as it were of enchantment over
her born sons ; and Kosciuszko felt himself a
stranger among the less simple and more sophisti-
cated men with whom he was now thrown.

While busy training soldiers his thoughts turned
often to his little estate which he had placed in the
charge of his sister.

" See that the Dutch cheeses are made," he writes
to her. " Please put in the grafts given me by
Laskowski, and in those places where the former ones
have not taken. To-morrow sow barley, oats. Plant
small birches in the walk immediately behind the
building." ^

" Why on earth don't you write to me ? " he
says, reading her a fraternal lecture. " Are you
ill ? Your health is bad. Take care of yourself ;
do not do anything that might trouble you. Say

I Letters of Kosciuszko.

THE YEARS OF PEACE 61

the same as I do, that there are people worse off
than I, who would like to be in my place. Provi-v
dence will cheer us, and can give us opportunities j
and happiness beyond our expectations. I always 1
commend myself to the Most High and submit I
myself to His will. Do you do this, in this way)
calm yourself, and so be happy. Here is a moral
for you, which take to the letter. For Heaven's
sake get me some trees somehow. Let the buds
have sap, not like they are at the Princess's. Good-
bye. Love me as I do you with all our souls." ^

In the course of his duties Kosciuszko had con-
stantly to make journeys to Warsaw on business.
When there he entered into close relations with
those noblest of Poland's patriots and reformers,
Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kollontaj, both holding
offTceUMer the CrowiTandTemployed in drawing up
the reforms that the Great Diet was passing. Here
too Kosciuszko often saw his already friend, Niem-
cewicz, who was bringing out patriotic plays and
taking an active part among the enlightened political
party. The high esteem in which Kosciuszko was
held, not merely by those who loved him personally
but by men who only knew of him by repute, may
-be illustrated by a letter addressed to him, not then,
but later, by Kollontaj, in which the latter tells
Kosciuszko that words are not needed to express
how much he prizes the friendship of one " whom
I loved, honoured and admired before fate granted
me to know you in person." 2

In 1790 Prussia concluded a defensive and offen-
sive alliance with Poland, which, as the sequel

» op. cit.

» Letters of Hugo Kollontaj. Poznali, 1872 (Polish).

62 KOgCIUSZKO

shows, she was prepared to break at the psycholo-
gical moment, in order to secure PoUsh help in the
probable Prussian war against an Austrian- Russian
coalition. Poland began to make ready for the field.
Kosciuszko was sent southwards, to Lublin, where
he remained for the summer months. His employ-
ment was to train the recruits for approaching
active service. Against the difficulties always to
beset him throughout his career of lack of ammuni-
tion and want of funds, he devoted himself to his
task with the energy and foresight that were cus-
tomary with him. He was ordered in September to
move to Podolia, on the frontiers of which the
Russians were massing. He stayed in that district
for many months uivtiUthe July of 1791.

There the commandant of KalSneniec was no other
than his old comrade and friend, Orjowski.

" Truly beloved friend," wrote Orlowski to Kos-
ciuszko during the winter of 1790, chaffiing him on
the untiring activity that he displayed at his post :
" I hear from everybody that you don't sit still in
any place for a couple of hours, and that you only
roam about like a Tartar, not settUng anywhere.
However, I approve of that. It is evident that
you mean to maintain your regiment in the dis-
cipline and regularity of military service. I foresee
yet another cause for your roaming about the world,
''which you divulged in my presence. You write to
me for a little wife, if I can find one here for you." ^

For, as is clear from various expressions in Kos-
ciuszko's letters, the soldier, who was no longer young,
was yearning for domestic happiness. And now,
in the turmoil of warlike prepafaTions, he fell in love

* T. Korzon, Kosciuszko,

THE YEARS OF PEACE 63

with a girl of eighteen, Te kla Zurowska ^J:he daughter
of a noble, ancTlierress to his estates. The courtship
between the general bordering on middle age— he
was then for ty-five — and this child in her teens
has given us Kosciuszko^sjove-letters that are among
the most charaiing "productions of his pen, for their
tenderness and their half-playful chivalry, charac-
teristic not only of Poland's national hero, but in
themselves typically Polish. The couple met for the
first time at a ball in a country manor-house. We
can visualize the picturesque spectacle of the ball-
room, brilhant with the gorgeous national costumes
of the guests, both men and ladies ; the rugged and
simple soldier in his Polish uniform, courteously
handing to the many figured Mazur or the stately
Polonaise the slim girUsh form sporting her tight
sleeveless little coat with miUtary facings and rich
fur edgings and sleeve-like streamers drooping from
the shoulders, with her hair dressed in two long
plaits sweeping to her skirts. The girl's family was
staying in the town that was Kosciuszko's head-
quarters, and so near Kosciuszko's rooms that the
lovers could watch each other from their windows.
Seeing one of Kosciuszko's officers leave his general's
house in haste, Tekla, with the assurance, to use
no harsher term, of her years, wrote a rebuke to her
lover for getting rid of his subordinates with greater
speed than was seemly. Kosciuszko replied by
informing her what the business had been between
himself and the soldier in question : " but I greeted
him beautifully and politely, and if he went away
quickly it was certainly because he saw a great many
unfinished papers before me." ^

* Letters of Kosciuszko.

64 KOSCIUSZKO

There was another,. Xekla on the scenes, Tekla
Orlewska, a cousin of the first Tekla, whose friend-
sTiip^arM sympathy were freely given, both to Kos-
ciuszko and the girl he loved. " To the two
Teklas " Kosciuszko pens this letter.

" For the notebook sent me " — this to Tekla
Zurowska — " I thank thee very much, although it
is somewhat undurable, not suitable for use. 'Twas
a pity for little hands to labour at such a passing
thing : a pity to wear eyes out over so small a form
of writing which it must overstrain the eyes to read :
it would have been better instead to have written
more. I know not to whom I must write, whether
to the first little Tekla or to the second ; but what
I do know is that I love the first and am the greatest
friend to the second. Both reproach me for some-
what of which I do not find myself guilty. To the
first I had no opportunity of writing, and now I
am sending my answer by Kniaziewicz " — the future
famous soldier of the Napoleonic legions : " but
should he not come I have no one by whom to write,
for I do not know which of my friends visits you.
The second ought to reproach herself because she
forgot so good a friend, and because with so many
opportunities she told me nothing about either the
first friend or about herself. They tell me that
Orlewska has looked with favour upon a certain
person, and that he has wounded her heart with
love. Little Tekla, when thou writest send me
at the same time one of the coral beads from thy
neck. May Providence enfold thee in the cloak of
perfect happiness, and be thou always convinced of
my steadfastness, friendship, esteem, respect." ^

» Letters of Koiciuszko,

THE YEARS OF PEACE 65

But although Tekla's mother warmly encouraged
Kosciuszko's cause, her father looked askance at
his daughter's suitor : either on account of the
disparity of age between them, or, which seems
more probable, for the reason that Kosciuszko
possessed neither large estates nor a great family
name. On one occasion Kosciuszko, not finding
himself pressed to make a longer stay under the
Zurowski roof, took an earl}/ departure, telHng
Tekla that :

"It is always a bad thing for the uninvited to
stay on. Through my natural delicacy I under-
stood that I was one too many. I had to go, albeit
with sorrow. I will now ask you where you are
going to-morrow. If I could find a good excuse I
would go there too. . . . May Heaven bless the
mother and daughter, and may it also send down
upon the father, even though he is unfriendly to
me, bountiful riches of health. ... I kiss j'our
little feet, and when you are dining with an English-
man and Frenchman forget not the Pole who wishes
you well." ^

" Captains P. and P. told me," he says later,
" that I was the cause of your shedding tears.
That such precious drops from lovely springs should
be shed through suspicion of me causes the greatest
anguish to my heart. Therefore I kneel and kiss
your little hands until I win your pardon. But
think not that I ever had any idea of casting an
aspersion on you. It was only the result of my
native frankness. I never have failed to relate to a
friendly person what T "see, think, and hear. Now
I will correct myself. Never henceforth will I

I op. cit.
5

66 KOSCIUSZKO

practise my frankness on you : even my thoughts
shall be restrained." ^

But at times he attempted to keep the young
lady in some sort of discipline.

" Going to dine two miles off " — the Polish mile,
be it observed, is more than three times the length
of ours — " is a very bad thing," not for herself, he
hastens to add : " four miles for your delicate
mother are too much, and I am afraid lest she
should feel it. As for you, if it were eight, all the
better. The more you exert yourself the better
your health will be. Jump, laugh, run, but don't
sleep after dinner ; and if you cannot go out, at least
walk in the hall, play or read." 2

Again : " Please write more clearly, for I lose
half of the pleasure ; or if you will write in pencil,
wet it in water, then the letters will not be rubbed
out." 3

On her side the lady imposed orders upon her
lover with which he, not very willingly, complied.

" I have acted according to thy command," he
writes, " and will not go to the christening, although
it was disagreeable to me to refuse. I have no choice,
because thou only art the mistress of my heart.
Do whatever seems to thee best. To behold thee
happy is my prayer to God." He tells her that he
sees her father prowling about the windows of his
own house and looking suspiciously in the direction
of Kosciuszko's, but : "I will do as thou desirest,
and will behave most politely, and if he says any-
thing against my opinions I will gnaw out my tongue,
but will answer nothing back." 4

' Letters of Kosciuszko. * Ibid.

S Ibid. 4 Ibid.

THE YEARS OF PEACE 67

The ill-founded rumour that in Kosciuszko's
youth he had intended to run off with Ludwika
Sosnowska had got to the ears of Tekla's father.
Certain enemies of Kosciuszko's did their best to
slander him yet further. The result was a scene
of the sort more familiar a hundred and odd years
ago than now : a girl throwing herself weeping at
the feet of an enraged parent, the wrath of the
father dissolving into tears, but his determination
remaining implacable. The history of it was duly
handed on to the absent Kosciuszko, whose comment
was as follows :

" I return thee, but bathed with tears, thy good-
night." He charges Tekla not to let her mother,
who regarded Kosciuszko with sincere affection, fret
herself sick over what had happened. " Embrace her
as fondly as she loves thee. . •. . Amuse and distract
her so that her thoughts may incline her to sleep."
He complains that Tekla does not tell him how
she herself has weathered the storm : that he knows
nothing of what is happening in her home. " I
should be glad to be even in thy heart and enfold
thee all within my heart. Each moment makes
me uneasy for thee. ... As for me .. . all my mind
is confused. There is bitterness in my heart, and
I feel fever tearing my inmost being. Go to
bed, and sleep with pleasant thoughts, seeing thy
mother better. ... I commend thee to that Provi-
dence who is beneficent to us all. Once more I
embrace thee. I am going away, but in thought
I am always present by thy side." ^

To Tekla's mother he wrote :

" I cannot, God knows, I cannot keep silence or

I Ibid.

68 KOSCIUSZKO

send letters, for what I have heard and read has
struck me Uke a thunderbolt. You do not bid me
write again, my little mother " — here he uses one
of the caressing untranslatable Polish diminutives.
'' I see that you have been prevailed upon by his
[her husband's] persuasions. I see that I shall be
parted from her for ever. ... I will always act accord-
ing to the bidding of the mother who is mine and
the mother of her who will always be in my heart.
I will write no more and will not visit at her house,
that the sight of her shall not be as poison to me. . . .
However, may the all High Providence bless you ;
and now I can write no more." ^

He then went off to manoeuvres. But the lovers
had by no means given up hope. They continued
their correspondence, and Kosciuszko, at Tekla's
suggestion and subject to her approval, sent her a
letter which he had drawn up for her father with a
formal request for her hand.

The father returned an unmitigated refusal,
repeating the absurd charge that Kosciuszko had
intended to abduct his daughter. To this Kos-
ciuszko repUed with dignity and respect, ending
with the words :

" If I cannot gain for myself your favour, if I
do not win for myself the hope of gaining her
I love, if I do not receive the title so honourable
for me of your son and am not to be made happy,
at least I look for the approbation of an honest
man." ^

Zurowski's answer was to remove his family to
his Galician estate. Kosciuszko wrote joint letters
to the mother, whom he still fondly terms his
I Letters of Koiciuszko. » Ibid.

THE YEARS OF PEACE 69

" little mother," and to the daughter, assuring
the former that his reply to her husband had
been :

"... most mild because he is your husband and the
father of my little Tekla ; but I now see no chance
after such a letter [the father's], at the very memory
of which my blood boils. But I thank you for your
kindness to me, which will be held in my undying
remembrance. Your character, your rare attach-
ment to your daughter, will be an example to all. , . .
May you live long and happily, and you will find
your reward when you wish to take it. My God !
what a horrible idea that I should have done violence
to a law of nature, and in spite of the father have
carried off from his house my beloved ! And thou,
the life of my heart, who wert to have been the
sweetness of all my life, little Tekla, forgive me
for not finding fitting words at this moment, but,
weeping, I bow my head to kiss thy little feet with
affection that shall endure for ever. Do not exalt
me in thy thoughts, but tread down all the proofs
of my friendship and drown in thy memory my
love for thee." ^

" I will always be with you both" — this to Tekla's
mother, bidding her good-bye in language of unshaken
affection : " although not present, yet in heart and
thought." 2

Korzon notices that at the moment of Kosciuszko's
rebuff at the hands of his Tekla's father, who was
after all nobody more than an ordinary landowner,
the rejected suitor had several thousand soldiers
under his command, and in days when wild and
lawless acts were not unknown, and not difficult

I Ibid. 2 Ibid.

70 KOlSCIUSZKO

of execution in a country where conditions were
unsettled and communications long, it would have
been easy enough for him to have carried his way
by sheer force. But outrage and violence against
another's rights, defiance of law and honour, were
foreign to Kosciuszko's whole trend of character.
Here, then, love passes out of Kosciuszko's hfe,
whose only passion henceforth will be that of de-
votion to his country. Five years later Tekla
married Kniaziewicz, the friend of Kosciuszko who,
with him, was to be sung in the most famous
of Poland's poems, the Pan Tadeusz of Adam
Mickiewicz.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND

In 179 1, amidst an outburst o"f national rejoicing,
was passed the Polish Constitution of the 3rd of
May. Polish music and song have commemorated
the day — to this hour the Polish nation dedicates
each recurrent anniversary to its memory — when
Poland triumphantly burst the shackles that were
sapping her life and stood forth in the van of
European states with a legislation that evoked the
admiration of Burke, Walpole, and the foremost
thinkers of the age. The old abuses were swept
away, A constitutional and hereditary monarchy
was established. Burghers were granted equal civic
rights with the nobility, the condition of the peasants
was ameliorated. Freedom was proclaimed to all
who set foot upon the soil of Poland.

New life now lay before the transfigured Polish
state. But an internally strong and poHtically
reformed Poland would have dealt the death-blow
to Russia's designs of conquest. Catherine II's
policy was therefore to force back internal anarchy
upon the nation that had abjured it, and to prevent
the new Constitution from being carried into effect.
She had in her hand a minority of Polish nobles
who had no mind to part with their inordinate

71

72 KOSCIUSZKO

privileges ttiat the new laws had abolished, and who
regarded a liberal constitution with distrust and
disfavour. At the Empress's instigation the chief
of the malcontents^Felix Potocki, Xavery Branicki,
and Se'veriTT'Rzewuski, went to Petersburg to lay
their grievances before her. Out of this handful of
Pohsh traitors Catlifirine formed a confederation,
suppor ted by Russia ; and in the spring of 1^92
she formally declared war upon _Px)lan(l Such is
the tragic storjrbT the Confederation of Targoivica,
the name that has gone dowiTto^oaTum nTthe history
of Poland, its members held as traitors by Polish
posterity and by the majority of their contemporaries.
While events were thus hurrying on in his country
Kosciuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in
her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 to Michal
Zaleski :

" Having heard that you are staying in the Brzesc
palatinate and are my near neighbour, and always
my partisan and friend, I cannot refrain from sending
you the expression of esteem which is due to you,
as well as one of astonishment that you have sacri-
ficed this time to domestic tranquillity and to your
own happiness, Hving with the lady admired by all
and most especially beloved by me for her character
and most beautiful soul, and that you have aban-
doned your country, to which you could have been
of great assistance. This is the time when even
where there is diversity of opinions there ought to
be one unity of aim for her happiness, for leading
I her to importance in Europe, to internally good
( government. I well know and am convinced of
your character, heart and patriotism ; but, as your
talents, judgment, wit, and general knowledge of

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 73

law are well known, so I should wish that you would
bfc of assistance to your country. It is a sure fact
that every citizen, even the most unimportant and
leasT~lristructed, can cqntrijbute^ to the universal
go0d;'bntiie~tcrwhoin the Almighty has given under-
sfariding of affairs peater Jhan JhaFoJ^^
wh^njie^ ceases to be active. We must all unite in
one aim,^ to release our land from the domination
of foreigners, from the abasement and destruction
of the very name of Pole. On ourselves depends
the amendment of the government, on our morals ;
and if we are base, covetous, interested, careless of
our country, it is just that we shall have chains on
our necks, and we shall be worthy of them." ^

Through the spring of 1792 Kosciuszko was pre-
paring the division ot the aTmy under his command
for the war wjth Russia. His were still the heart-
burnings that he was to experience whenever he
was at the head of men, those of a commander who
had neither sufhcient soldiers, ammunition, nor pro-
visions. On the 2 1st of May the King delivered a
stirring speech to the Diet. " You behold deeds,"
he said, alluding to the Confederation of Targowica,
" that aim at the destruction of the authority and
existence of the present Diet and of the restoration
of our entire independence. You behold the open
support of those compatriots who are committing
violence against the welfare and will of our country.
You behold, therefore, the indispensable necessity
that we should adopt as best we can every measure
to defend and save our country. Whatever, honour-
able Estates, you resolve I will not only accede to,
but I hereby declare that I will take my place in
' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

f

74 KOSCIUSZKO

person wheresoever my presence shall be called for."
Probably those of his audience who knew the King
best took his words at their true value.

On May 22nd the Russi an army_ crflssed the
frontier. Poland appealed to the terms of her
treaty with Prussia, and requested the Prussian
state to come to her assistance. Prussia^ threw off
the mask and di savo wed her treaty obligations ;
and the Poles were left to their own resources. Their
numbers equalled, according to Kosciuszko's com-
putation, one single column of the Russian army.
An" empty treasury, an empty arsenal, were" beliind
them ; they were pitted against seasoned soldiers,
trained in successful war ; but the fire of patriotism
ran high through their ranks. Many of the nobles,
following the old traditions of Polish history, raised
regiments in their own provinces, armed them at
their own cost, and in person led them to the field.
The commander-in-chief was young Jozef Ponia-
towski, the nephew of the King. He was to become
one of the most popular of Poland's heroes, as the
brilliant leader of a Polish army during the Napo-
leonic wars ; but at this moment he was a youth
of twenty-eight, whose military knowledge was
wholly neghgible, and who owed his high position
to his family connections. The only Polish general
who had practical experience of war was Kosciuszko ;
and with him, for all Poniatowski's devoted service
of his country, rests the chief fame of the Ukraine
campaign.

The story of that three months' campaign is one
of a gallant struggle of a little army, now winning,
now losing, inflicting heavy loss upon a superior
enemy, but graduall}' driven back by overwhelming

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 75

numbers through Volhynia and Podoha. During .
all these weeks of desperate fighting Kosciuszko
figures as the man whose bravery and skill again;
and again saved the critical moment. In his dis-'
patches to the King, whose arrival in the Pohsh
camp was daily looked for, and who never came,
Poniatowski praises Kosciuszko as " doing great
service, not only by his courage, but also by his
singular prudence." At Wlodzimierz, when the Pohsh
arrny~was TnT^The utmost danger of annihilation,
Kosciuszko thrust back the attack of " the whole i
Russian army" — the quotation is his — with heavy ;
loss to the Russians and httle to the Poles. It was, 1
thus Poniatowski declares in his report to the
King, thanks " to the good and circumspect dis-
positions of General Kosciuszko that our retreat was
continued in unbroken order." The subsequent safe
passage of the army over the river is again ascribed
to Kosciuszko. And so we arrive at the famous
day of Dubienka, fought on the banks of the Bug
between the marshes of Polesie and Gahcia, which
covered Kosciuszko's name with glory, and which
by tragic paradox saw the end of that stage of his
nation's hope for freedom.

Kosciuszko has left a manuscript account, written
in the nature of a rough sketch, of the Ukraine
campaign.^ It passed into the keeping of Stanislas
Potocki, one of the great pioneers of educational
reform in Poland, not to be confounded with his
ill-famed namesake, Fehx Potocki. In it Kos-
ciuszko gives with brevity and characteristic modesty
the account of the battle : how, with Poniatowski

' Printed in Edward Raczynski's Pictures of Poles and of Poland
in the Eighteenth Century. Poznaa, 1841 (Polish).

76 KOSCIUSZKO

too far off to render assistance, and the safety of
the whole PoUsh army depending upon Kosciuszko,
" left to himself," to cite his own words — he in-
variably employs the third person — he threw up
defences and prepared for the Russian attack.
Through the day of July i8th he stood with five
thousand Poles^ and eight "cannon against a Russian
army of^twenty thousand soldiers and forty cannon,
repelHng the enemy with sanguinary loss to the
latter. One of his officers who fought by his side
told afterwards how he had seen Kosciuszko in the
hottest fire calm and collected as though taking a
stroll. The battle that has been called the Polish
Thermopylae only closed when towards evening the
Russian commander, Kachowski, violated neutral
territory and fell upon the Poles from the side of
Galicia, so that, hopelessly outnumbered, they were
compelled to retreat. The retreat through the forest
on a pitch-dark night was led by Kosciuszko, says
an eyewitness, " with the utmost coolness and in the
greatest order," directing an incessant fire on the
pursuing Russians that told heavily upon them.
Kniaziewicz, whom we last saw in a less stern moment
of Kosciuszko's life, here played a gallant part.

It has been pointed out that the honours of the
day fell, not to the winner of the field of Dubienka,
but to the vanquished : to Kosciuszko, not to the
Russian general, Kachowski. Pole and Russian
alike speak of the high military talent that Kosciuszko
displayed, no less than of the valour that fought on,
refusing defeat till hope was no more. The immediate
result so far as Kosciuszko was personally concerned
was the acknowledgment of his services by the King
in the shape of promotion and the nomination he

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 77

greatly desired to the command of one of the
chief regiments in the PoHsh army, with all the
affluence that these rewards bestowed upon a man
who had never hitherto enjoyed wealth. His fame,
too, travelled beyond the confines of his coulTEfy,
and the Legislative Assembl}^ in Paris conferred
upon him the title of Citizen of France.

But the battle of Dubienka^waTliot a week old,
and the army was eager for fresh action, when the
Kijig gave in his adherence to the Confederation of
Targowica ; in other words, sold himself and his
nation to Russia. The echoes of his speech to the
Diet, calling" upon the nation to fight till death,
vowing that he was ready to make the sacrifice of
his own life should his country need it, were still
in the ears of those who had heard it. The army
had waited in vain for him to place himself at its
head ; then Catherine II threatened him, and as
usual he dared not disobey. " Yielding to the
desire of the Empress," he told his subjects, " and
to the necessities of the country," he condemned
the proceedings of the long Diet in which he had
recognized the salvation of Poland at that one great
moment of his life when he had thrown in his lot
with the noble party of patriotic reform ; and now,
as the mouthpiece of Catherine II, he pronounced
the nation's only safety to he with the promoters
of Targowica. The most favourable view of Stanislas
Augustus's conduct has httle more to urge in his
favour than that he was neither a fool nor a hero,
saw no hope of success in the national movement,
and preferred to throw in his lot with the other side.
It was on the 23rd of July that the King signed the
Confederation of Targowica. The news fell as the

78 KOSCIUSZKO

sentence of death upon the Pohsh camp that was
palpitating with patriotic ardour. In the presence
of all his officers Poniatowski wrote to the King as
plainly as he dared : " News is here going through
the camp which surel}^ must be spread by ill-disposed
men who wish evil to Your Majesty, as though
Your Majesty would treat with the betrayers of
our country. The degradation of cringing to
the betrayers of our country would be our
grave." ^

The army, was, however, bidden bj/ the King to
lay down~arms, and was recalled to Warsaw. " It
is impossible to express the grief, despair, and anger
of the army against the King," wrote Kosciuszko
several months later as he collected his memories
of the campaign in the manuscript notes referred
to above. " The Prince-Oeneral himself gave proof
of the greatest attachment to the country. All
recognized the King's bad will, since there was still
the possibility of defeating the Russian army."
Kosciuszko was present at one of the conferences
held after the arrival of the Royal mandate between
the Polish commander and Kachowski ; and he
could not restrain tears of wrath as he took stock
of the Russian officers whom he was convinced that,
were it not for treachery at headquarters, Poland
could have overcome. Honour forbade the Polish
officers to retain their commissions any longer in a
service that was no more national, but that was
in the domination of Russia and of those who were
playing into her hands. On the march back to
Warsaw, PoniatowsM^ent in his resignation to the
King, and on another page of The ' same^^document

I T. Korzon, Kosciuszko,

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 79

Kosciuszko — followed by hundreds of others — in a
few laconic words laid down histardily- and hardly
won command.

"Since," his note runs, "the change in the
national conditions are contrary to my original oath
and internal convictions, I have the honour to request
Your Royal Majesty for the favour of signing my
resignation.

" Tadeusz Kosciuszko."

" We have sent our notes to the King," writes
Kosciuszko to his warm friend, Adam Czartoryski's
wife, to whom he poured out the wounds of his
heart, bleeding at the sight of the terrible danger
under which his country was being submerged,
" requesting for our resignations, and for this reason,
that in time we may not be drawn into an oath
against our convictions, that we may not be col-
leagues of those three [Branicki, Felix Potocki, and
Rzewuski], and for fear that the King, if we requested
later on for our resignations, will by that time not
have the power to grant them to us. Therefore, we
wish to secure ourselves, declaring to the King that
if there is nothing against the country in these
negotiations [with Russia], and if those personages
will not be in the army, then we will serve, and
withdraw our resignations. I expect to be in Warsaw
this week, where I shall assuredly find out something
more certain about this change. Oh, my God !
why wilt Thou not give us the means of rooting out
the brood of the adversaries of the nation's happi-
ness ? I feel unceasing wrath against them. Day p
and nighTlhat one thought is forced upon me,

80 KO^CIUSZKO

and I shudder at the recollection of what end may
befall our country." ^

He reached Warsaw, and was summoned by the
King to an audience. Then a dramatic scene took
place. The plainT" reserved soldier, the Puritan
patriot as a PoHsh historian calls him, was con-
fronted with the monarch who was a trained orator,
to whom elegance of dress and manner were a study
of moment, whose handsome face and captivating
address had won him the favour — a fatal gift for
Poland — of the Semiramis of the North. Against
every cajolement of one who was an adept in the
arts of blandishment, promise and flattery, Kos-
I ciuszko had but one argument : that of the straight-
; forward devotion that saw his country outraged,
and that would accept no compromise where duty
I to that country and to his own honour were con-
cerned. In his boyhood Kosciuszko had been in
marked manner dependent on the King's favour.
Now — as at a later crisis in their mutual relations —
it is clear that, however outspoken his language to
his sovereign, Kosciuszko never forgot a subject's
respect. Let him tell what passed in his own words :
"^ " The King strongly urged me, sought to persuade,
to convince me, finally sent me ladies known as
being in relations with him, if only we would not
abandon him and would not insist on our resig-
nations. I always gave him the same answer,
shattering all his arguments, so that he was often
embarrassed what to answer me. At last with
tears I told him that we had deserved some con-
sideration, fighting for our country, for the state,
for Your Royal Majesty, and that we will never

* T. KoTzon, Kosciuszko.

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 81

act against our convictions and honour. No one
has yet chosen pubUcly to proclaim those scoundrels
as infamous traitors. I alone have said this openly
in the presence of the King, to which he answered :
' Leave them to their shame.' " ^

Kosciuszko thus remained master of the situation.
Stanislas Augustus was silenced before an integrity
that would not bend before him. On August I7.th
the Russian army entered Warsaw as conquerors.
The Kmg"was" virtually a prisoner, for whom neither
side felt compassion or respect, in the hands of
Russia. By a rescript of Catherine II the Polish
arniy was drafted into small divisions and scattered
through the country, thus rendered powerless. The
reforms of the Constitution wer_fi_set_aside. Russia
ruled the country behind her puppets, the leaders
of^T^argowica. The second partition was only a
question of time.

Radom was designated to Kosciuszko as his head-
quarters ; but his determination to serve no more
under the betrayers of his country held firm. He
remained two months longer in Warsaw in the
seclusion of an abandonment of grief, choosing to
stay within walls rather than see the streets of the
capital of Poland under the Russian heel. The
last piece of business with which he concerned
himself in the official capacity he was surrender-
ing for honour's sake was to recommend to the
King's notice several officers, including Kniaziewicz,
for their gallantry in the late war. Amidst his
heavy anxieties he made time to write to a friend,
whose name we do not know, but who, to judge
from the letter's closing words—" I bid you fare-

I op. cit.
6

82 KO^CIUSZKO

well, embracing you a thousand times with the most
tender affection for ever " — was one very dear to
Kosciuszko, begging him to relieve the necessities
of some individual whose position in Warsaw
without means had aroused the writer's pity. ^

" Watering my native soil with my tears," — thus
he writes to Felix Potocki, in an outburst of the
patriotic indignation that even his enemies respected
— " I am going to the New World, to my second
country to which I have acquired a right by fighting
for her independence. Once there, I shall beseech
Providence for a stable, free, and good government
in Poland, for the independence of our nation, for
virtuous, enlightened, and free inhabitants therein." ^
He fell sick for sorrow at the thought of his
nation's future. From his bed of convalescence in
the famous Blue Palace of the Czartoryskis in
Warsaw he wrote to Michal Zaleski, acquainting
him with his intention to repair as soon as the fever
left him to Galicia, thence :

"... possibly to Switzerland or England, whence
I shall watch the course of events in our country.
If they make for the happiness of the country, I
, shall return ; if not, I shall move on further. I
I shall enter no foreign service, and if I am forced
■ to it by my poverty then I shall enter a service where
there is a free state — but with an unchanging attach-
ment to my country which I might serve no longer,
as I saw nothing to convince me of the amelioration of
the government or that gave any hope for the future
happiness of our country in the measures at present
taken " — meaning, of course, under the rule of the
Confederation of Targowica. " I would not enter

" Letters of Kosciustko. » Op. cit.

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 83

into undertakings of which the end is unknown :
I feared lest, if only indirectly, they should contribute
to the unhappiness of the nation. I do not doubt
that there are men even among the Targowicians
who are trying to serve their country, but I know
not if they can, and if they are in the way of doing
it. With my whole heart and soul I long that some
one experienced in affairs could enlighten me, for I
am in the darkness of night." ^

Told in the light of subsequent events, from \
standing ground removed from the passion and \
confusion of a present strife, with, moreover, the j
diplomatic intrigues of Russia and Prussia laid open
before our eyes by modern research, the issues of
this period of Poland's history are intelUgible enough ;
but to the combatants in the arena the Hne was not
so defined. Some among the Poles of the period,
even including men of no mean capacity, wavered
as to whether Catherine II were not genuinely pre-
pared to guarantee a free Poland under Russian
protection. The leaders of Targowica have been
branded with the name of traitors, and justly ;
but it seems as though they proceeded rather as
hotheaded and unpatriotic malcontents than with
the dehberate intention of betraying their country.
Kosciuszko was ill-versed, either by nature, training,"!
oTTnciinatIon71n~the art of politics ; but through | >^
this tangled we'b~''H'''^fplexky~lind uncertainty, j

when present and future were equally enveloped )

in obscurity, his singleness of aim suppUed him with
the unerring ilis^ncr'wrth whicIT through the whole
of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were
spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly

» Ibid.

84 KOSCIUSZKO

betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this
pure patriotism he directed himself unfalteringly
through the~most difficult and involved hours of
his nation's history, allowing neither friendship,
tradition, nor personal advantage to obscure for
one moment the great object he had at stake — his
country's good. He now laid down high rank,
parted with fortune upon which his hand had barely
had time to close, and prepared to face an uncertain
future in a foreign land. On the eve of his departure
from Poland he wrote to Princess Czartoryska :

" I was faithful to my country ; I fought for her
and would have offered myself a hundred times to
death for her. Now it seems as if the end of my
services for her is at hand ; perhaps this uniform
which I am wearing will be the badge of shame.
I will cast it off betimes, and lay my sword in the
grave till future better times. ... I will once more
bid farewell to you. Princess, whom all adore for
your virtues and devotion. I kiss the hands which
have often dried tears shed for our country." *

Before leaving his native land, as far as he knew
for ever, he sent, together with his farewell to the
sister whom he never saw again, his last disposition
of the home to which his heart clung with deep
affection, and which was to be his no more.

" Permit me, my sister, to embrace you, and
because this may be the last time I shall be given
that happiness I desire that you should know my
will, that I bequeath to you my estate of Siech-
nowicze, and that you have the right to bequeath
it either to one of your sons or to any one, but under
one condition : that Susanna and Faustin shall be

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko,

r?

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND 85 v^i!'

kept in every comfort until their death ; that the \

peasants from every house in the whole estate shall
not do more than two days of forced labour for
the men, and for the women none at all. If it were
another country where the government could ensure
my will, I would free them entirely ; but in this
country we must do what we are certain of being
able to do to relieve humanity in any way, and
always remember that by nature we are all equals,
that riches and education coh~sTituie~ltTre^hry differ-
ence ; ~That we"ougIrr*to have consideration for the
poor and instruct ignorance, thus bringing about
good morals. I am sending you my signature so^_^
that you can act legally according to my wish, so
that later no disputes shall arise against you or
your sons. Farewell ! I embrace you with the
tenderest heart.

" Embrace Susanna for me," he adds in a post-
script. " Thank her for the friendship she has shown
me. Remember me to Faustin and to your son
Stanislas. Let him give his children a good repub- \
lican education with the virtues of. justice, honesty, j
and honour." ^ \

The letter has come down to us with its small
clear handwriting, a few words in the postscript
erased with the scrupulous neatness of the whole
document. We can best realize how near the con-
dition of the peasants lay to Kosciuszko's heart
when we reflect that it filled his parting communi-
cation to his sister, written at the moment when,
full of sorrow and anxiety, he was going into the
unknown road of exile. He left Poland in the
e arly days of October , having 'won, says Korzon,
n^v t op. cit.

86 KOSCIUSZKO

the esteem of friend and foe alike. Before crossing
the frontier into what was Pohsh soil, but since
Austria had taken possession of it at the first par-
tition was politically recognized as Poland no longer,
he unbuckled his sword and, hfting his hands to
heaven, prayed that he might be given once again
to draw it in the defence of his dearly loved land.

\

CHAPTER V

THE EVE OF THE RISING

In Galicia, Kosciuszko was welcomed by a crowd
of sympathizers. The Czartoryskis, then residing
on their Gahcian estates, showed him such marked
proofs of their admiration that it was even said,
without foundation, that Princess Czartoryska des-
tined Kosciuszko for the husband of one of the
princesses. A married daughter drew his portrait,
inscribing it, after the taste of the epoch, with the
words : " Tadeusz Kosciuszko, good, vaHant, but
unhappy." On his feast-day, October 28th, the
ladies of the family presented him with a wreath
woven of leaves from an oak planted by the Polish
hero with whose name Kosciuszko's is often coupled :
Jan Sobieski, the deliverer of Christendom. At
the banquet held on this occasion was present, not
only Kosciuszko's friend, Orlowski, like him banished
and for the same reason, but a young son of the
house who had fought in the recent Russo-Polish
war, Adam Czartoryski, soon to be removed by
Catherine II's orders as a hostage to the Russian
court, and who in later life was one of the principal
and noblest figures in Polish politics of the nine-
teenth century. We shall see his path again touching
Kosciuszko's at a critical juncture in the history of
their nation.

87

88 KOSCIUSZKO

The bitterness of an exile's wanderings, so familiar
to the generations of Poles that followed through
the unhappy years of the succeeding century, was
now to be tasted by Poland's national hero. The
Austrian Government took alarm at the evidences
of popularity that were showered upon him. The
Russian Government would not have his presence
near the Polish frontiers, and the Russian sentries
received orders to be on the look-out not to permit
him to enter any Polish town. Legends ran through
the ranks of the superstitious Muscovite soldiery
that Kosciuszko had, notwithstanding, come up to
the sentries, and when fired upon had changed
himself into the form of a cat. Such tales apart,
on December 5th he was given notice by the Austrian
authorities to quit the country within twelve hours.

" I am grieved to leave beloved Poland, my friends
and so many hearts that were good to me," sadly
writes Kosciuszko. Spies and secret agents were
watching the posts ; so he and his fellow-Poles
protected themselves and their correspondence by
various precautions, fictitious names, confidential
messengers. " Bieda " — misfortune — was the pseu-
donym by whicir"Kosciuszko, his heart heavy. with
foreboding for his country and grief at her loss,
signed himself, and wished to be known, as he set
out for a foreign land. Cracow lay in the route that
as a fugitive from the Austrian Government he was_
obliged to choose. He tarried a few days in the
beautiful old city that is the sepulchre of Poland's
kings, and where he was after death to lie in the
last resting-place of those whom his nation most
honours. Thence he journeyed to Leipzig.

In Leipzig were the men of the nation whose

THE EVE OF THE RISING 89

minds and aims were in the closest sympathy with
his. Kollontaj, Ignacy and Stanislas Potocki, and
the band of Poles who had been responsible for the
drawing up of the Constitution of the 3rd of May,
had gathered together in the Saxon city out of
reach of Russian vengeance, where they could best
concert measures for saving Poland. In January
1793 the news reached them that Prussia, whose
attitude in regard to scraps of paper is no recent
development, had helped herself to that portion of
Great Poland which had escaped her at the first
partition, and to Thorn and Danzig, which she had
so long coveted, while Russia took the southern
provinces of Poland and part of Lithuania.

But the camp of PoHsh patriots in Leipzig would
not give Poland up for lost. " She will not remain
without assistance and means to save her," wrote
Kollontaj. " Let them do what they will ; they
will not bring about her destruction." " Kosciuszko
is now in Paris" — this was 'early in 1793. "He
is going to England and Sweden." As a matter
of fact he went to neither at that time. " That
upright man is very useful to his country." ^

It was to France, which had won Kosciuszko's
heart in his youth, and whose help he had seen
given to America in the latter's struggle for her
freedom, that he now made his way to beg a young
Republic's assistance for his country. He was not
a dip lomat himself ; but Kollontaj and Ignacy
Potocki were behind him with their instructions.
Fortune never favoured Kosciuszko, He arrived in
Paris^'sHortly before the execution of Louis XVI.
He may even have been in the crowd around the

1 Letters of Hugo Kollontaj.

90 KOSCIUSZKO

scaffold, the witness of a scene that, however strong
his popular sympathies, would have inspired a man
of his stamp with nothing but horror and con-
demnation. The European coalition was formed
against France : and Poland was forgotten. The
i-^c^T, second partition by which Russia and Prussia
secure^^the booty that they had, as we have seen,
a few months previously arrogated to themselves,
was effected in a Europe convulsed with war, that
little noticed^andr^carceljr protested against the
dislnemberment of a European state and the aggran-
dizement ^f_two JoJEers, wfth'its fatal consequence
ofTrussia's rise to power. The tale of the scene
in the Diet of Grodno, convoked under the com-
pulsion of the Russian armies to ratify the partition,
is well known : how the few deputies who consented
to attend sat with Russian cannon turned upon
them, while Russian troops barred all the exits of
the hall and carried off by night to Siberia those
members who protested against the overthrow of
their nation : how the group of Poles, deprived of
all other means of defending their country, opposed
an absolute silence to every proposal of their enemies,
till the deed was signed that left only a shred of
territory, in its turn doomed to fresh destruction,
to the Republic of Poland.

From Lebrun, the French Minister of Foreign
Affairs, Kosciuszko succeeded in winning the promise
of financial assistance in the war for Polish indepen-
dence that the national party was projecting ; but
shortly after his interview with Kosciuszko Lebrun
lost liberty and office. With Danton Kosciuszko
would have nothing to do, and in the sanguinary
scenes of the Terror all pubHc traces of the Pole are

THE EVE OF THE RISING 91

lost. It is certain that he had no dealings with
Robespierre or with any of the men who then
sat in the French revolutionary tribunals. How
strongly he abhorred their manner of revolution is
proved not only from expressions he let drop during
his own dictatorship, but still more by his mode of
proceeding when he himself was responsible for a
new government of state. He was a democrat p
always ;_but jn_the best sense of^ the jword".

Seeing that there wa^^iio 'prospect of gaining any-
thing for Poland from France, Kosciuszko remained
in seclusion during his further stay in Paris, writing
in the blood-stained city the record to which we have
already alluded of the national war in which he had
lately fought. In this work he freely criticizes all
the errors on the part of its leaders which he had
seen, and in vain pointed out to Poniatowski, during
its course ; but nothing could shake his conviction
that the Polish cause could have triumphed. " If,"
he writes, " the whole army had been assembled
beyond the Vistula with volunteers and burghers
from the cities of Warsaw and Cracow, it would
have risen to sixty thousand, and with a king at its
head, fighting for its country and independence, what
power, I ask, could have conquered it ? " He refers
to the sights he had beheld in the American War as
a proof of what soldiers could do without pay, if
animated by enthusiasm for a sacred cause. That
patriotic fire, says he, burned as brightly in his own
country : the Polish soldier, the Polish citizen, were
equally ready to sacrifice all. " The spirit was |
everywhere, but no use was made of their enthu- \ (^
siasm and patriotism. . . . The weakness of the }
King without military genius, without character or j

92 KOSCIUSZKO

love of his country, has now plunged our country,
perhaps for ever, into anarchy and subjection to
Muscovy." I

Thus wrote Kosciuszko in the day when a peasant
soldiery was unknown in Poland ; and a few months
later he was leading his regiments of reapers and
boatmen to the national Rising,

There was nothing more for him to do in Paris.
His intended attempt in England was given up, for
Kollontaj received a broad hint from the British
representative in Saxony that Kosciuszko's presence
would be both unwelcome to George III and profit-
less to the Polish cause. Kosciuszko may then
have gone on from France to Brussels, but in the
summer of 1793 he was b ack i n Leipzig in close
consultatioiTwrth Ignacy Potocki,

The condition of Poland was by now lamentable.
Her position War1±Ht"of~arTmfidir aFfhe meFcy of
a foreign army, ravaged by war, although she was
not at war. Russians garrisoned every town.
Russian soldiers were systematically pillaging and
devastating the country districts, terrorizing village
and town alike. Poles were arrested in their own
houses at the will of their Russian conquerors, and
despatched to Siberia. Hidden confederations, espe-
cially among the Pohsh youth, were being carried on
all over Poland, preparing to rise in defence of the
national freedom. In the teeth of the Russian
garrison and of Catherine IPs plenipotentiary, Igel-
strom, Warsaw sent secret emissaries to the scattered
remnants of the Polish army ; and in the conferences
that were held at dead of night the choice of the

' MS. of Kosciuszko in Pictures of Poles and of Poland in the
Eighteenth Century, by Edward Raczynski.

THE EVE OF THE RISING 93

nation fell upon Kosciuszko as the leader above
all others who should avenge the national dishonour
and wrest back at the point of the sword the inde-
pendence of Poland. In the beginning of September
I7Q3 two j^olish delegates carried the proposal to
him where lie stUrremained in Leipzig: '~' "

~TEe great moment in the life of Tadeusz Kos-
ciuszko had now arrived. His fiery and enthusiastic
soul leapt to its call ; but with none of the headlong
precipitance that would have been its ruin. Kos-
ciuszko was too great a patriot to disdain wariness
and cool calculation. He never stirred without
seeing"eaCh— stgp^early mapped out before him.
He took his counsels with Potocki and his other
Polish intimates in Saxony ; then formulated his
plan of the R ising. Each district of Poland and
Lithuania was to be under the command of some
citizen who would undertake secretly to beat up
the inhabitants to arms. The people could choose
their own officers according to the general wish.
Special insistence was laid on the duties of caUing
the peasants to fight side by side with the land-
owners. The PoHsh peasant had hitherto been
counted incapable of bearing arms : Kosciuszko
overrode this ancient prejudice with results that
have given one of the finest pages to the history
of Poland.

He then went alone with his confidant, Zajonczek,
to the Polish frontiers to collect information. He
sent round messengers to the different provinces of
Poland and Lithuania carrying his letters and full
instructions, while Zajonczek, under a false name,
was despatched to Warsaw. The report the latter
gave to Kosciuszko on his return was not satis-

/

94 KOSCIUSZKO

factory. Matters were not as yet ripe for the under-
taking. Financial means in the widespread ruin
that had come upon Poland through the over-
running of her territories by a hostile soldiery were
lacking, in spite of the private generosity of such
a donor as the Warsaw banker, Kapostas. The
difficulties of getting together a fighting force when
Russian soldiers, closely supervising every move-
ment of the Poles, occupied the country and the
Polish divisions had been purposely drafted to
great distances from each other by the Empress,
were almost insuperable. The peasant rising upon
which Kosciuszko had built his best hopes was
unprepared. But two elements remained that
should, as pointed out by^ajonczek, consolidate
and ensur e a _great national ^sjng : universal
detestation of_the ^ Russia n and limitless confidence
in t he chosen national lea der. Kosciuszko deemed
it advisable to wait. " It is impossible," he said
after receiving Zajonczek's report, " to build on
such frail foundations ; for it would be a sad thing
to begin lightly and without consideration, only to
fall." He himself, recognizable as he was through
all Poland, was too well known to act as a secret
propagandist in his own country ; so in order to
throw dust in the eyes of Russia and Prussia he
retired to Italy for some months. In Florence he
found Niemcewicz. Niemcewicz tells how one night
as he sat reading by his lamp the door burst open,
the Polish greeting, " Praised be Jesus Christ,"
rang on the exile's ear, and a former colleague of
the poet's hurried in with the simple words : "I
have come for Kosciuszko." ^ But the last act

I J. Niemcewicz, Recollections of My Tin%es, Paris, 1848 (Polish).

THE EVE OF THE RISING 95

was played out in Dresden, that for long after
Ko^ciuszko's day remained a stronghold of Polish
emigration. While Kosciuszko was taking final
deliberation there with Kollontaj and Ignacy Potocki,
t wo Pole s came straight from Poland, and on their
knees besougkL-^^sciuszko to give the word. The
moment was now or never. PlacarHs~were being
fastened mysteriously on the walls of Warsaw,
calling to the Poles to rise. Patriotic writings were
scattered broadcast, patriotic articles printed, in
spite of the rigorous Russian censorship, in the Polish
papers. Plays were acted in the theatre whose
double meaning, uncomprehended by the Russians
who sat in crowds in the audience, were fiery
appeals to PpUsh patriotism. The streets of Warsaw,
all Poland and Lithuania, were seething with agita-
tion and secret hope. The suspicions of Igelstrom
were aroused. He resolved to take over the arsenal
in Warsaw and to disarm and demobilize the Polish
army. In this dilemma Kosciuszko was compelled
to throw his all on one card or to fail. He there-
fore decided^ on the war ; and in March_i794 he
re-e ntered Poland as the champion of her freedom.

CHAPTER VI

THE RISING OF KO^CIUSZKO

A BARN in the vicinity of the city has long been
shown as the place where Kosciuszko slept the
night before he entered Cracow. The Polish general,
Madahnski, who by a ruse had evaded the Russian
order to disarm, was the first to rise. At the head
of his small force, followed by a hot Russian pursuit,
he triumphantly led his soldiers down towards
Cracow . At the news of his approach the Russian
garrison evacuated the town, and Kosciuszko entered
its walls a few hours after the last Russian soldier
had left it, at midday on March 23^794. It
had been intended to convene the meetmgof the
citizens at the town hall on that same day ; but
the Act of the proclamation of the Rising proved to
be so erroneously printed that it could not be pub-
lished, mainly because Kosciuszko was not an adept
at putting his jdeas intojwriting, and the numerous
corrections were too much for the printers. The
night was spent by Kosciuszko in rewriting the
manifesto which was to travel all over Poland,
which was to be proclaimed from the walls and
pulpits of PoHsh town and village, and despatched

96

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 97

to the governments of Europe. The room yet
remains where he passed those hours in the house
of General Wodzicki who, when commanded by
Russia to disband his regiments, had at Kosciuszko's
instigation secretly kept them together, paying them
out of his own pocket, in readiness for the Rising.

The morning of March 24th_ dawned. With
Wodzicki and several other soldiers, Kosciuszko
assisted at a low Mass in the Capuchin church,
where the officiating priest blessed the leader's
sword. " God grant me to conquer or die," were
Kosciuszko's words, as he received^" the" weapon
from the monk's hand. At ten o'clock he quietly
walked to the town hall. From all quarters of the
city dense throngs had poured into the market-
place, and pressed outside the town hall, over-
flowing on to its steps, surging into its rooms. In
front of his soldiers Kosciuszko stood before the
crowds on the stone now marked by a mem.orial
tablet, upon which on each anniversary of March 24th
the Poles lay wreaths. That day, that scene, remain
engraved for ever among the greatest of Poland's
memories. As far as Kosciuszko's gaze rested he-saw
his countrymen and countrywomen with eyes turned
to him as to the deliverer of themselves and of their
country, palpitating for the moment that he was
about to announce, many of them wearing his por-
trait and carrying banners with the inscriptions :
" Freedom or Death," " For our rights and liberty,"
" For Cracow and our country," or " Vivat Kos-
ciuszko." The drums were rolled, and in the midst
of a dead silence the army took the oath of the
Rising,

"I, N. N., swear that I will be faithful to the

7

98 KOSCIUSZKO

Polish nation, and obedient to Tadeusz Kosciuszko,
the Commander-in-Chief, who has been summoned
by this nation to the defence of the freedom, Hberties,
and independence of our country. So help me God
and the innocent Passion of His Son."

Then Kosciuszko himself stepped forward. With
bared head, his eyes lifted to heaven and his hands
resting on his sword, standing in plain civilian garb
before his people, surrounded by no pomp or retinue,
in the simplicity that was natural to hira^the new
dictator of _Poland in his turn took his 6ath/:
, " I, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, swear in the sight of
•p God to the whole Polish nation that I will use the
power entrusted to me for the personal oppression
of none, but will only use it for the defence of the
integrity of the boundaries, the regaining of the
independence of the nation, and the solid establish-
ment of universal freedom. So help me God and
the innocent Passion of His Son."

He then went inside the town hall. There he
was greeted by cries of " Long live Kosciuszko !
Long live the defender of our country ! " When
silence was restored he delivered a speech, the exact
J_erms of which are not accurately recorded ; but
it is known that he demanded of every class in the
country to rally to the national banner — nobles,
burghers, priests, peasants, Jews — and that he placed
himself at the disposal of his people without requiring
of them any oath, for, said he, both he and they
were united in one common interest. Then he
ordered the formal Act of the Rising to be read.
It was received with an ~outbursF~of applause, and
the clamour of rejoicing rang to the skies.

This Act was in part grafted on Kosciuszko's

y

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 99

personal observation of the American Declaration
of Independence, but only in part. Kosciuszko's
own intensely Polish soul speaks through the docu-
ment — the anguish of a Pole at the sight of his
country's wrongs, the cry of a desperate but un-
despairing patriotism, the breathing of the spirit
that should bring new life.

" The present condition of unhappy Poland is
known to the world" — so the Act opens. "The
iniquity of two neighbouring Powers and the crimes
of traitors to the country have plunged her into
this abyss. Resolved upon the destruction of the
Polish name, Catherine II, in agreement with the
perjured Frederick William, has filled up the measure
of her crimes."

The treatment of Poland at the hands of Russia
and Prussia is then recapitulated in accents of the
burning indignation that such a recital would
necessarily evoke. Of Austria Kosciuszko makes
no mention, for the reason that he believed, erro-
neously, as he was to learn by bitter experience,
that her sympathies could be enlisted for the
national movement.

" Overwhelmed with this weight of misfortune,
injured more by treachery than by the power of the
weapons of the enemies . . . having lost our country
and with her the enjoyment of the most sacred
rights of freedom, of^safety, of ownership, ahke
of ouT persons and of pur property, deceived and
played upon by some states, abandoned by others,
we, Poles, citizens, inhabitants of the palatinate of
Cracow, consecrating to our country our lives as
the only possession which tyranny has not yet torn
from us, are about to take those last and violent

a'^cI

100 KOSCIUSZKO

measures which patriotic despair dictates to us.
Having, therefore, the unbroken determination to
die and find a grave in the ruins of our own country
or to deUver our native land from the depredations
of tyranny and a shameful yoke, we declare in the
sight of God, in the sight of the whole human race,
and especially before you, O nations, by whom
liberty is more highly prized than all other posses-
sions in the world, that, employing the undenied
I right of resistance to tyranny and armed oppression,
I we all, in one national, civic and brotherly spirit,
^ unite our strength in one ; and, persuaded that the
happy result of our great undertaking depends chiefly
on the strictest union between us all, we renounce
all prejudices and opinions which hitherto have
divided or might divide the citizens, the inhabitants
of one land and the sons of one country, and we
all promise each other to be sparing of no sacrifice
and means which only the holy love of liberty can
provide to men rising in despair in her defence.
V " The deliverance of Poland from the foreign

0: soldier, the restoration and sajeguardin g of the
\ integrity of her boundaries, the extirpation of 'all

oppression and usurpation, whether foreign or domes-
tic, the firm foundation of national freedom and of
the independence of theJRepublic : — such is the holy
ft im of oj ir-Kising,"

To ensure its success and the safety of the country
Kosciuszko was elected as Po land's military leade r
and he r civil he ad, with the direction that he should
nommate a National Council to be under his supreme
authority. The proclamation then enters into the
details of his functions and those of the Council.
He alone was responsible for the military conduct

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 101

of_thie_jffiax. Its financial management, the levy of
taxes for its support, internal order and the adminis-
tration of justice, were under the jurisdiction of
the Council, to which was entrusted the task of
endeavouring to gain foreign help and of " directing
public opinion and diffusing the national spirit so
that Country and Liberty may be the signal to all
the inhabitants of Polish soil for the greatest sacri-
fices." All those who should act in any way against
the Rising were to be punished by death. Emphasis
was laid on the fact that the government was pro-
visional, to rule only until the enemy should be finally
driven out of Poland, and that it held_no^ power
of making a fresh constitution. " Any sucli act
will be considered by usas a usurpation of the national
sovereignty, similar to that against which at the
sacrifice of our lives we are now rising." The head
of the government and the National Council were
bound by the terms of the Act " to instruct the
nation by frequent proclamations on the true state
of its affairs, neither conceahng nor softening the
most unfortunate events. Our despair is full, and
the love of our country unbounded. The heaviest
misfortunes, the mightiest difficulties, will not succeed
in weakening and breaking the virtue of the nation
and the courage of her citizens.

" We all mutually promise one another and the
whole Polish nation steadfastness in the enterprise,
fidelity to its principles, submission to the national
rulers specified and described in this Act of our
Rising. We conjure the commander of the armed
forces and the Supreme Council for the love of their
country to use every means for the liberation of
the nation and the preservation of her soil. Laying

102 KOSCIUSZKO

in their hands the disposal of our persons and pro-
perty for such time as the war of freedom against
despotism, of justice against oppression and tyranny,
shall lastj._w.e,. desire that they always have present
this gfeattruth^: that the preservation of a people
is the higHesTTaw." ^ '^

For th e first time in Poland — and it would have
been an equal novelty in most other countries of

,^ the period — noble s and pe asants side by sid e signed
their adhesioiTto th e Act a mong thousands^of signa-
tures. The levy of the military forces, the arrange-
ments for the taxation and the necessary business
of the Rising, were at once set on foot, and Kos-
ciuszko spent the rest of March 24th in these affairs
and in his heavy correspondence. On the same
day he sent out four more speci al address es, one
to the Polish_and_ Lithuanian armies, a second to
the citizens of the nation, a third to the Polish_clergy,
and a fourth to the women_of_Po]and.

In the manifestos that Ko^ciuszko issued all
through the course of the Rising there is not only
the note of the trumpet-call, bidding the people
grapple with a task that their leader promises them
will be no easy one ; there is something more — a
hint of the things that are beyond, an undercurrent
of the Polish spirituality that confer upon these
national proclamations their peculiarly Polish quality,
emanating as they do from the pen of a patriot,
whose character is typically and entirely Polish.

\ K psciuszko a ppeals_alwa.ys- to^the id^a^ Jto the secret
and sacred faiths of men^s^earts ; but with that
strong practical sense with which his enthusiasm
was tempered and ennobled.

I Act of the Rising. T. Korzon, Kokciuszko.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 103

" Each of us has often sworn to be faithful to
our mother country " — thus runs his manifesto to the
Pohsh and Lithuanian armies. " Let us keep this
faith with her once more, now when the oppressors,
not satisfied with the dismemberment of our soil,
would tear our weapons from us, and expose us
unarmed to the last misery and scorn. Let us turn
those weapons against the breasts of our enemies,
let us raise our country out of slavery, let us restore
the sanctity of the name of Pole, independence to
the nation, and let us merit the gratitude of our
native land and the glory dear to a soldier.

" Summoned by you I stand, comrades, at your
head. I have given my life to you ; your valour and
patriotism are the surety for the happiness of our
beloved country. , . . Let us unite more strongly,
let us unite the hearts, hands, and endeavours of
the inhabitants of the whole land. Treachery thrust
our weapon from our hands ; let virtue raise again
that weapon, and then shall perish that disgraceful
yoke under which we groan.

" Comrades, can you endure that a foreign oppres-
sor should disperse you with shame and ignominj^
carry off honest men, usurp our arsenals, and harass
the remainder of our unhappy fellow-countrymen
at will ? No, comrades, come with me ; glory and
the sweet consolation of being the saviours~oF]your
country await"you. r~give you~my word that my
zeal will endeavour to equal yours. . . .

" To the nation and to the country alone do you
owe fidelity. She calls upon us to defend her. In
her name I send you my commands. _ With you,
beloved comrades, I take for our ^^tchwom : Death
or Vic tory ! I trust in you and in the nation which

104 KOSCIUSZKO

has resolved to die rather than longer groan in
shameful slavery," ^

To^ the citizens^ he wrote :

" Fellow-citizens ! Summoned so often by you
to save our beloved country, I stand by your will
at your head, but I shall not be able to break the
outraging yoke of slavery if I do not receive the
speediest and the most courageous support from
you. Aid me then with your whole strength, and
hasten to the banner of our country. One zeal in
one interest ought to take possession of the hearts
of all. Sacrifice to the country a part of your
possessions which hitherto have not been yours, but
the spoils of a despot's soldiers."
( He begs them to give men, weapons, horses, linen,
j provisions, to the national army, and then proceeds :

" The last moment is now here, when despair in
the midst of shame and infamy lays a weapon in
our hands. Only in the contempt of death is the
hope of the bettering of our fate and that of the
future generations. . . . The first step to the casting
off of slavery is the risk taken to become free. The
first step to victory is to know your own strength.
. . . Citizens ! I expect all from your zeal, that you
will with your whole hearts join the holy league
which neither foreign intrigue nor the desire for
rule, but only the love of freedom, has created.
Wh oso is no t_with us js_agamst us. ... I have
sworn to the nation that. I will use the power
entrusted to me for the private oppression of none,
but I here declare that whoever_ ^cts ag ainst our
league shall be delivered over as a traitor and an
enemy" of the~^ co unt ry~to the criminal tribunal

I March 24, 1794. Given in Letters ofKosciuszko, ed. L. Siemienski.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 105

established by the Act of the nation. We have
aheady sinned too much by forbearance, and mainly
by reason of that policy public crime has scarcely
ever been punished." ^

The man who wrote thus was the strictest of
rmAitaJX-^isciplmaria^ and yet he detested blood-
shed and openly condemned_j,ll revolutionary excess.
At a later moment in the war theTriend^who shared
his tent tells how Kosciuszko struggled with him-
self through a sleepless night in the doubt as
to whether he had done well to condemn a certain
traitor to the capital punishment which he could
never willingly bring himself to inflict.

The manifesto to the clergy is on the ordinary
lines. In that to the wornen of Poland the ever-
courteous and chivalrous Kosciuszko speaks in the
following terms :

" Ornament of the human race, fair sex ! I
truly suffer at the sight of your anxiety for the
fate of the daring resolution which the Poles are
taking for the liberation of our country. Your
tears which that anxiety draws forth from tender
hearts penetrate the heart of your compatriot who
is consecrating himself to the common happiness.
Permit me, fellow-citizenesses, to give you my
idea, in which may be found the gratification of
your tenderness and the gratification of the public
necessity. Such is the lot of oppressed humanity
that it cannot keep its rights or regain^them other-
wise than by offerings painful and costly to sensitive
hearts,^ sacrificing themselves entirely for the cause
of freedom,

" Your brothers, your sons, your husbands, are

I March 24, 1794. Op. cit.

106 KOSCIUSZKO

arming for war. Our blood is to make your happi-
ness secure. Women ! let your efforts stanch its
shedding. I beg you for the love of humanity to
make lint and bandages for the wounded. That
offermg "from laiF^hands will relieve the sufferings
of the wounded and spur on courage itself." ^

Kosciuszko's appeals to the nation soon found
their response. Recruits flocked to the army, and
money, weapons, clothing, gifts of all descriptions
came pouring in. Polish ladies brought their jewels
to the commander or sold them for the public
fund ; men and women cheerfully parted with
their dearest treasures. The inventories range from
such contributions as four horses with a month's
fodder from a priest, " five thousand scythes " given
by a single individual, couples of oxen, guns and
pistols, to bundles of lint, old handkerchiefs, and
what was probably the most valued possession of
its owner, set down in the list of donations as " the
gold watch of a certain citizen for having distin-
guished himself at Kozubow," where on March 25th
one of the Polish detachments had engaged the
Russians.

In the course of these patriotic presentations
there occurred an episode that stands out among
the many picturesque incidents in the romantic
story of Kosciuszko's Rising. Three PoHsh boatmen
came to the town hall to offer Kosciuszko twenty
of their primitive flat-bottomed barges. Hearing of
their arrival, Kosciuszko pushed his way through
the crowds thronging the building, till he reached
the ante-room where stood the peasants in their

' Cf. K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection.
Vienna, 1909 (Polish),

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 107

rough sheepskin coats and mud-stained top-boots,
" Come near me, Wojciech Sroki, Tomasz Brandys,
and Jan Grzywa," he cried, " that I may thank you
for your offering. I regret that I cannot now satisfy
the wish of your hearts [by using the barges] ; but,
God helping and as the war goes on, then will our
country make use of your gift." The peasants were
not to be baulked of their desire to give their all
t^ Poland. The spokesman of the trio, followed by
his comrades, shook into his sheepskin cap the little
sum of money that they had managed to scrape
together and, smiUng, handed it to Kosciuszko,
apologizing in his homely dialect for the poorly
stuffed cap. Kosciuszko flung the cap to an officer
who stood by his side, crying, " I must have my
hands free to press you, my beloved friends, to my
heart." Drawn by that personal fascination which,
united to the patriot's fire, invariably captivated
all those who cameTnto contact with Kosciuszko,
the simple boatmen fell on their knees before him,
kissing his hands and feet.

Kosciuszko remained in C racow until the jest of
April , overwhelmed from six in the morning till
far into the night by the affairs of the Rising, col-
lecting his army, sending broadcast secret letters
hidden in pincushions or otherwise concealed by
the officers to whom they were entrusted, directing
the supremely important task of concentrating the
scattered Polish regiments that were with varying
success fighting their way towards him. He was
working against time with the. Russians forming up
against his scanty numbers. " For the love of our
country make haste," is his ever-recurrent cry in
his directions to his subordinates. On the ist of

108 KO^CIUSZKO

April he left Cracow at the head of his small army,
prepared to take the field against the enemy who
was about to attack Madalinski. At his camp
outside Cracow his long-cherished desire was ful-
filled ; bands of peasants, some two thousand strong,
marched in, armed "with their pikes and the
scythes that won them the name, famous in Polish
annals, of the " Reapers of Death." Mountaineers,
too, came down in their brilliantly coloured garb
from the Polish Carpathians. To all these men
from the fields and the hills Kosciuszko became not
only an adored chief, but an equally beloved brother
in arms.

On the day following the advent of the peasants,
on the 4tliof^ April, was fought the famous battle
of Raclawice.

^T^osciuszko was no invincible hero of legend. His
military tale nt was undou bt ed, but not superlative
and~not Inf allibl e ; yet Raclawice was~tEe"tnumph
of~a~great idea, the vi ctory, under th e strength of
the ideal, of^ few_against many. It lives as one of
those moments in a nation's history that will only
die with the nation that inspired it. The peasants
turned the tide of the hotly fought battle. " Peasants,
take those cannon for me. God and our country ! "
was Kosciuszko' s cry of thunder. Urging each other
on by the homely names they were wont to call across
their native fields, the peasants swept like a hurricane
upon the Russian battery, carrying all before them
with their deadly scythes, while Kosciuszko rode
headlong at their side. They captured eleven cannon,
and cut the Russian ranks to pieces. Even in our
own days the plough has turned up the bones of
those who fell in the fight, and graves yet mark the

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 109

battle lines. In the camp that night Kosciuszko,
with bared head, thanked the army in the name of
Poland for its valour, ending his address with the
cry, " Vivat the nation !_ Vivat Liberty!" taken
up by the soldiers with the acclamation. " Vivat
Kosciuszko ! " Kosciuszko then publicly conferred
upon the peasant Bartos, who had been the first
to reach the Russian battery — he perished at Szcze-
kociny — promotion and nobility with the name of
Glowacki. Before all the army he flung off his
uniform and donned, as a sign of honour to his
peasant soldiers, their dress, the sukman, which he
henceforth always wore — the long loose coat held
with a broad girdle and reaching below the knee.

" The sacred watchword of nation and of free-
dom," wrote Kosciuszko in his report of the battle
to the Pohsh nation, " moved the soul and valour
of the soldier fighting for the fate of his country
and for her freedom." He commends the heroism of
the young volunteers in their baptism of fire. He
singles out his generals, MadaHnski and Zajonczek,
for praise. Characteristically he breathes no hint
of his own achievements.

" Nation ! " he concludes. " Feel at last thy
strength ; put it wholly forth. Set thy will on being
free and independent. By unity and courage thou
shalt reach this honoured end. Prepare thy soul
for victories and defeats. In both of them the spirit
of true patriotism should maintain its strength and
energy. All that remains to me is to praise thy
Rising and to serve thee, so long as Heaven permits
me to live." ^

^ ' K. Bartoszewicz, History of Koiciuszko's Insurrection,

110 KOSCIUSZKO

The Polish army was badly broken at Raclawice,
and Kosciuszko's immediate affair was its reorgan-
ization ; but the moral effect of the victory
was enormous. Polish nobles opened their private
armouries and brought out the family weapons.
Labourers armed themselves with spades and shovels.
Women fought with pikes. The name of Kos-
ciuszko was alone enough by now to gather men to
his side. " Kosciuszko ! Freedom ! Our country ! "
became the morning and the evening greeting
between private persons.

After the battle of Raclawice, Kosciuszko at once
issued further calls to arms, especially urging the
enrolment of the peasants. This measure was to
be effected, so Kosciuszko insisted, with the greatest
consideration for the feelings of the peasants, all
violence being scrupulously avoided, while the land-
owners were requested to care for the families of
the breadwinners during their absence at the war.
The general levy of the nation was proclaimed. In
every town and village at the sound of ^the^ alarm
bell the inhabitants were to rally to the public
meeting-place with scythes, pikes or axes, and place
themselves at the disposition of the appointed leaders.
Thus did Kosciuszko endeavour to realize his
favqurit£_.pLOJect of an army of the jjeople.

Unable for lack of soldiers to follow up his victory,
Kosciuszko remained in camp, training his soldiers,
sending summonses to the various provinces to rise,
and seeing to the internal affairs of government.
The oaks still stand under which the PoHsh leader
sat in sight of the towers of Cracow, as he cast his
plans for the salvation of Poland. The spot is
marked by a grave where lie the remains of soldiers

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 111

who died at Raclawice ; and on one of the trees a
PoHsh officer cut a cross, still visible in recent years.

Kosciuszko's character held in marked measure
that most engaging quality of his nation, what we ^ jji^^
may term the PoHsh sweetness^ but it never degen- {'^ jj^
erated into softness. His severity to those who '^'^
held back when their country required them was
inexorable.

" I cannot think of the inactivity of the citizens
of Sandomierz without emotions of deep pain," he
v/rites to that province, which showed no great
readiness to join the Rising. " So the love of your
country has to content itself with enthusiasm with-
out deed, with fruitless desires, with the sufferings of
a weakness which cannot take a bold step ! Believe
me, the first one among you who proclaims the
watchword of the deliverance of our country, and
courageously gives the example of himself, will
experience how easy it is to awaken in men courage
and determination when an aim deserving of respect
and instigations to virtue only are placed before
them. Compatriots ! This is not now the time to
guard formalities and to approach the work of the
national Rising with a lagging step. To arms, Poles,
to arms ! God has already blessed the Polish
weapons, and His powerful Providence has mani-
fested in what manner this country must be freed
from the enemy, how to be free and independent
depends only on our will. Unite, then, all your
efforts to a universal arming. Who isnot with us
is against us. I have believed that no PoTe~witr -^
beTn that case. If that hope deceives me, and there
are found men who would basely deny their country,
the country will^jdisown them and will give jthem

112 KOSCIUSZKO

over to the national vengeance, to their own shame
and severe responBibTtrt5C"^

This language ran like a fiery arrow through the
province : it rose. On all sides the country rose.
Kosciuszko's envoy carried tO"on^~Tjf^the FoUsli
officers in Warsaw the terse message: " You have
a heart and virtue. Stand at the head of the work.
The country will perish by delay. Begin, and you
will not repent it. T. Kosciuszko." * By the time
this letter reached its destination Warsaw had
already risen. "^

For weeks the preparation for the Rising in War-
saw had been stealthily carried forward. Igelstrom
had conceived the plan of surrounding the churches
by Russian soldiers on Holy Saturday, disarming
what was left of the Polish army in the town, and
taking over the arsenal. The secret was let out
too soon by a drunken Russian officer, and the Polish
•patriots, headed by the shoemaker Kihnski, gave
the signal. Two thousand, three, hundred and forty
Poles flew to arms against nine thousand Russian
soldiers. Then ensued the terrible street fighting,
in which Kilinski was seen at every spot where the
fire was hottest. Each span of earth, in the graphic
phrase of a Polish historian, became a battlefield. 3
Through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday the
city was lit up by conflagrations, while its pave-
ments streamed with blood. When the morning of
Holy Saturday broke the Russians were out of the
capital of Poland, and all the Easter bells in Warsaw
were crashing forth peals of joy. Stanislas Augustus,

» K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection.

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

3 A. Choloniewski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Lwow, 1902 (Polish).

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 113

who a few weeks earlier Md__atJg£lstrom^s bidding
puBEcTy^roclaimed Kosciuszko to be a rebel and an
outlaw, liow^ wen t over to the winn ing _side . On
Easter Sunda}' the cathedral rang to the strains of
the Te Deum, at which the King assisted, and on
the same day the citizens of Warsaw signed the Act
of the Rising and the oath of allegiance to Kos-
ciuszko, The news was brought into Kosciuszko's
camp in hot haste by an officer from Warsaw. It
was in the evening. Drums beat, the camp re-
echoed with song, and on the following morning a
solemn Mass of thanksgiving was celebrated. No
salvos were fired, in order to spare the powder.
" Henceforth," joyfully cried Kosciuszko in a mani-
festo to his country, " the gratitude of the nation
will join their names " — those of Mokronowski and
Zakrzewski, the President of Warsaw, who had been
mainly responsible for the city's deliverance — "with
the love of country itself. Nation ! These are the
glorious deeds of thy Rising ; but," adds Kosciuszko,
whose foresight and sober judgment were never
carried away by success, '^remember this rfruth^
that thou hast done nothing so long as there is left
anything still to be done." ^

^'Three days^ after Warsaw was freed, Wilno, with
, a handful of soldiers rising in the nightr drove out
the Russian garrison, and the Russian army retreated
through Lithuania, marking their way by atrocities
which were but a foretaste of what awaited in no
distant future that most unhappy land.

" The powerful God," says the pronunciamento
of the Provisional Deputy Council of Wilno —
" delivering the Polish nation from the cruel yoke

' Kokciuszko. Periodical Publication, 1893-6. Cracow (Polish).

8

114 KO^CIUSZKO

of slavery has, O citizens of Lithuania, sent Tadeusz
Kosciuszko, our fellow-countryman, to the holy soil
to fulfil His will. By reason of the valour of that
man whose very dust your posterity will honour
and revere, the liberties of the Poles have been
born again. At the name alone of that knightly
man the Polish land has taken another form, another
spirit has begun to govern the heart of the dweller
in an oppressed country. , . , To him we owe our
country ! To him we owe the uplifting of ourselves,
to his virtue, to his zeal and to his courage." ^

The burden that rested on the shoulders of Kos-
ciuszko 'was~bne that would have seemed beyond the
mastery of one man. He had toj;aise_.aiL army, find
money, am munit ion, horses,_43ro visions. He had to
initiate and organize the Risiiigjii^ eyery_.£Ioyince,
bearing in mind and appealing to the distinctive
individualities of each, dealing in his instructions
not merely with the transcendentally difficult material
matters of the Rising, but with involved moral
questions. He was the military_chief, responsible
fo r the wh ole plan_of action of a war for national
existence. He was the civil chief, chosen to rule
the nation when the most skiHuTsteering of the ship
of state was requisite — when the government of
the country, owing to dismemberment, foreign in-
intrigues, foreign invasion, internal disunion, was
in a condition of chaos. The soundest political
acumen, the most unerring tact, was exacted of
him. He must needs adopt whatever political
measures he deemed necessary, no matter how hard
of execution : many of these were i nnova tions that
he daringly carried out^gaJjist_eyeix!^^iIu3ice and

* K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko' s Insurrection.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 115

tradition, because it was the innermost conviction
of his soul that they would save his nation. No
ddiiFf ~ Kosciuszko's great talent for_ organizatii?n
and appHcation, and the "robust ^rength of his
rchafacterrivould, in part at least, have borne him
through his herculean task ; but it was in the power ^ "7 '
^of the idea that we must find the key"fo his whole p
lea^dership of the struggle for his nation which in' >
the histoiy of that nation bears his name. Where .
Poland was concerned obstacles were not allowed |
to exist — or rather, were there merely to be overcome, j
Personal desires, individual frictions, all must go [
down before the only object that counted. j

" Only the one necessity," he writes to Mokro-
nowski, reassuring the General in brotherly and sym-
pathetic style as to some unpleasantness that the
latter was anticipating — for, with all his devotion
to the common end, Kosciuszko never failed to take
to his heart the private griefs, even the trifling
interests, of those around him — " the one considera-
tion of the country in danger has caused me to
expect that, putting aside all personal vexations,
you will sacrifice yourself entirely to the universal
good. . . . Not I, but our country, beseeches and
conjures you to do this. Surely at her voice all
delays, all considerations, should perish." ^

Impressing upon a young prince of the Sapieha
family, at the outset of the Rising, that he " must
not lose even a minute of time . . . although,"
Kosciuszko says, " the forces be weak, a beginning
must be made, and those forces will increase of
themselves in the defence of the country. I began
with one battalion, and in a few days I had col-

' Letters of Kosciuszko.

116 KOSCIUSZKO

lected an army. Let the gentry go out on horse-
back, and the people with scythes and pikes." Let
the officers who had been trained to a different
service abroad put aside preconceived ideas, and
fight in the methods demanded of a popular army.^

Or, far on towards the end of the Rising, Ko^-
ciuszko, calling upon the citizens of Volhynia to
rise for the Poland from which they had been torn
away, speaks thus : " You have no army in your
own land, but you have men, and those men will
soon become an army." He tells them that the
Poles who rose in Great Poland were not deterred
by the differences of religious belief between them.
" These hinder not at all the love of country and
of freedom. Let each honour God according to
his faith " — Kosciuszko himself was a devoutCatholic
— " and there is no faith that would forbid a man
to be free." ^

One of the earliest measures that Kosciuszko
inaugurated as the head of the provisional govern-
ment of his nation was in relation to the object
only less dear to him than the liberation of Poland :
that of the serfs. With time the Polish peasant
had sunk to the level of those in neighbouring
countries, although the condition of the serf in
Poland was never as deplorable as, for instance,
that which obtained in Russia. France had only
just effected the relief of her lower classes — and
this by an orgy of revolt and ferocity. Kosciuszko
now came forward with his reforms. The forced
labour of the peasant who could not bear arms was
redu£ed3Q^§lIth^^_a_hjlfofJjjj^^ oblig ation^

1 Letters of Kosciuszko. April 14, May 12.

2 K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 117

and for those who could take part in the national
war, abolished. The peasant was -now to enjoy the
full personal protection of the law, arid "the right
of ~tocmnotian when he cKoseT' Possession of his
own land was assured to him, and heavy penalties
were inflicted upon the landlords should they be
guilty of any acts of oppression. The local authorities
were bidden to see that the farms of those who
joined Kosciuszko's army should be tended during
their military service, and that the soil, " the source
of our riches," should not fall into neglect. The
people were exhorted, in the spirit, always incul-
cated by Kosciuszko, of mutual good-feeling and a
common love for Poland, to show their gratitude
for the new benefits bestowed upon them by loyalty
to the squires^ and by diligence in " work, in hus-
bandry, in the defence of the country." The dictator
then ordered the clergy of both the Latin and Greek
rites to read these decrees from the pulpit for the
course of four Sundays, and directed the local
commissions to send emissaries proclaiming them
to the peasants in every parish and hamlet. Thus
Kosciuszko took up the work that the Constitution
of the 3rd of May had more vaguely initiated,
and that had been terminated by Russian and
Prussian interference. He could not at this juncture
push his reforms further. Had he brought in a
total reversal of hitherto existing conditions while
a national insurrection of which the issues were
uncertain was proceeding, the confusion engendered
would have gone far to defeat the very object it
was his desire to bring about,

^ Kosciuszko promulgated these acts from camp
on May 7,''i794. About the same time he issued a

118 KOSCIUSZKO

mandate, requesting the churches and convents to
contribute all the church silver that was not posi-
tively indispensable in the Divine service to the
national treasury. Fresh coinage was stamped, with
on the one side the device of the old Polish Republic,
on the other that new and sacred formula : " The
Liberty, Integrity and Independence of the Republic,
17947" The term "Republic" as applied to Poland
was, of course, no subversive title, such being the
time-honoured name by which the Pohsh state had
been known through its history.

Tq^ KosciuszkQ__ihe"^wa:r-^wtts "E" holy erne. Its
object was, together with the restoration of national
independence, that of conferring happiness and free-
dom on every^xlass, religion,^ and individual in the
country. Take, for example, Kosciuszko's manifesto
to the citizens of the district of Brze^c, directing
that the religion of the Ruthenes of the Greek-
Oriental rite should be respected : words that in
the light of the subsequent history of a people who
have be?h, with fatal results, the victims first of
Russian, and then of German, intrigue, read with
a startling significance.

" In this wise attach a people, deceived by the
fanaticism of Russia, to our country. They will be
more devoted to their fellow-countrymen when they
see that the latter treat with them like brothers
. . . and that they open to them the entrance, as
to common fellow-citizens, to the highest ofiices.
Assure all the Oripn tal Greek s in my name that
they shall_have_ in_..C5mmpn with us every liberty
which freedom gives men to enjoy, and l;hat their
episcopaTe'withT'^il^ts^ authority according to the
laws of the Constitutional Diet shall be restored to

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 119

them. Let them use all the influence they may
have on the people of their religion to convince
them that we, who are fighting for hberty,
desire to make all the inhabitants of our land
happy." ^

He wrote to the clergy of the Ruthenian Greek
Orthodox rite, laying emphasis on the persecution
that their faith had suffered from Russia and on
the liberty that Poland promised them. " Fear
not that the difference of opinion and rite will hinder
our loving you as brothers and fellow-countrymen.
. . . Let Poland recognize in your devotion her
faithful sons. Thus you have the road open
before you to your happiness and that of your
descendants." ^

Following all these enactments of Kosciuszko's
there ensued a curious interchange of communica-
tions between him and the King of Poland. Stanislas
Augustus, under the apprehension that he was to
follow Louis XVI to the scaffold, wrote to Kosciuszko,
placing the continuance of such shreds of Royal power
as he possessed at the dictator's arbitration. Once
again Kosciuszko was called to measure swords with
his King and sometime patron. This time it was
Kosciuszko who was in the commanding position.
His sovereign^ wasjmore or less at his mercy. What
KiTopinion of the man was is clear frdnrthe scathing
indictment which his sense of outrage at the betrayal
of his country tore from his lips as he wrote the
history of the Ukraine campaign that Stanislas
Augustus had brought to ruin. Yet this was how
he answered, at the moment when his power was
supreme, in a letter dated May 20, 1794 :

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko. * Op. cit.

120 KO^CIUSZKO

" My Lord King,

" Just when I was engrossed in the midst of
so many other labours with the drawing up of the
organization of the Supreme Council, I received a
communication from Your Royal Majesty under
the date of the 5th instant. Having read therein
that Your Royal Majesty only desires authority and
importance when and inasmuch as I decide this
with the nation, as regards my opinion, I frankly
confess that, entertaining a loyal respect for the
throne, I hold the person of Your Royal Majesty
excepted from the power conferred upon me of
nominating personages to the Supreme Council.
As to the nation, the conduct of Your Royal Majesty
in the course of the present Rising, the restored
public confidence in Your Royal Majesty that was
weakened by the Confederation of Targowica, the
constancy with which Your Royal Majesty declares
that, albeit at the cost of great personal misfortune,
you will not forsake the country and nation, will .
contribute, I doubt not, to ^:he securing for Your
Royal Majesty of the authority in the Diet that
will be most agreeable to the welfare of the country,
I have written separately to the Supreme Council
upon the duty of imparting to Your Royal Majesty
an account of its chief actions, and this in the con-
viction that Your Royal Majesty will not only be
a source of enlightenment to it, but of assistance
inasmuch as circumstances permit. Likewise the
needs of Your Royal Majesty which you mentioii at
the end of your letter I have recommended to the
attention and care of the Supreme Council. Thanking
Your Royal Majesty for your good wishes concerning
my person, I declare that the prosperity of Your

sfiuastk.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 121

Royal Majesty is not separated in my heart and
mind from the prosperity of the country, and I
assure Your Royal Majesty of my deep respect." ^

Until the month of May Kosciuszko had been
governing single-handed. '~He'^had^ drawn ilp""the
decrees that were of^such moment to his country
in the primitive conditions of a camp in a soldier's
tent, with the collaboration of only his council of
three friends, Kollontaj, Ignacy Potocki, and Wejssen-
hof. Throughout his sole dictatorship he had
combined a scrupulous respect for existing laws
with a firm declaration of those reforms which must
be carried out without^elay, if Poland were to win
in her struggle for freedom. No trace of Jacobinism
is to be met with in Kosciuszko' s government.
Defending himself with a hint of wounded feeUng
against some reproach apparently addressed to him
by his old friend, Princess Czartoryska :

" How far you are as yet from knowing my heart ! "
he answers. " How you wrong my feehngs and
manner of thinking, and how Httle you credit me
with foresight and attachment to our country, if
I could avail myself of such impossible and such
injurious measures ! My decrees and actions up to
now might convince you. Men may blacken me
and our Rising, but God sees that we are _ript q
beginning a French revolution. My desire^ is to
destroYltEe~enemy^ I~aSi making sbine temporary
dispositions, and L.leave the framing of laws Jojhe
nation." ^

The whole country was now rallying round Kos-
ciuszko. Polish magnates, whose ancestors had

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko, » Op. cit.

122 KOSCIUSZKO

been heads of armies in the old chivalrous days of
the Republic of Poland, who had themselves led
soldiers in the field, came to him, begging to serve
in the lowest ranks if so be they might serve under
him. The King's nephew, Prince Jozef Poniatowski,
under whose command two years ago Kosciuszko
had fought as a subordinate officer, now placed
himself unreservedly at Kosciuszko's disposal. The
King, the nation, were in Kosciuszko^s hands. Yet
j he remained always the simple Lithuanian so ldier,
who wore the garb of the peasants, who livedlami-
liarly with the peasants in his army, treating them as
his brothers. His letters to his officers are couched
in the affectionate and intimate terms of an equal
friendship, reading as though from comrade to
comrade. " Dear comrade," is, in fact, the title by
which he addresses them when giving them his
instructions. Instead of orders and decorations, of
which he had none at his disposal, he offered them
snuff-boxes, watches, rings — " I have sent you a
ring of cat's-eyes that at night it may light you on
your journey," he writes to Mokronowski — or trifles
made by the hands of Polish ladies, accompanied
with a few graceful words spoken from the heart
that gave the gift its value. He is ever eager to
bring to public notice the name of any Pole who
ha^ridbne^~wnr"tjy Ihe 'CounTfyT alwayT^silent on
his~'^dwn deeds, turning off the prarses"and thanks
oTTus^eople^to the whole nation or to individuals.
The style of his commands bears an invariable hall-
mark of simplicity. " I conjure and entreat you
for the love of our country," is their usual wording.
One word, indeed, rings with unwearied reiteration
through Kosciuszko's pubhc manifestos, in his

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 123

private correspondence : the love of country: It p
is not he who cries to the sons of Poland to save
her ; it is^JPoland hersel f, and lie voices her call, yy
of which he considered himself but the moutEpiece,
with a touch of personal warmth for those to whom
he spoke, which they requited with a passionate
love.

" Dear comrade," he writes in the first weeks of
war to one of his deputies, " those who have begun
the Rising are in this determination : either to die
for our country or to deliver her from oppression
and slavery. I am certain that to your soul, your
courage, I need say no more. Poland will certainly
touch your sensitive heart, dear comrade." ^

The same tone is conspicuous in Kosciuszko's
many proclamations to the nation. In these, too,
he addresses the people of whose destinies he was
the ruler, who were under his obedience, as his " dear
comrades," his " fellow-citizens," his " brothers."
He regarded himself in no other light than that of :
the servant of his country, equally ready to command ^
or to resign his authority, according as her interests
demanded. Lust of power and personal ambition
were unknown to him. He was, if we may use the
expression, out for one object : to save his country ;
and any interest of his own was in his scheme non-
existent. " Let no man who prizes virtue," he
wrote, " desire power. They have laid it in my
hands at this critical moment. I know not if I
have merited this confidence, but I do know that
for me this power js only a weapon for the effectual ^ Q
defence of my country, and I confess that I long \ ^-
for its termination as sincerely as for the salvation

' Letters of Kosciuszko.

124 KOSCIUSZKO

of the nation." ^ He yearned not for the sword,
but for peace and the " Httle garden " of his dreams,
as he tells a friend. Given that temper of his mind
and the inherent nobility of his nature, and we
have the explanation how it is that not one un-
worthy deed, not a single moral stain, disfigures
the .^even months^, that , Kosciuszko stood at the
head of ~ thePoirsh state, beset though he was by
internal and external problems under which a man
of less purity of aim and single-heartedness than
his might well have swerved.

But for all his native modesty Kosciuszko was too
conscious of his obUgation to his country to brook
any infringement of the power he held. Writing a
sharp rebuke to " the whole principality of Lithuania
and especially to the Provisional Council of Wilno,"
which he had reason to believe was arrogating to
itself his functions, he declares that he would be
" unworthy of the trust " that his nation had con-
fided to him if he did not " know how to use and
maintain " his authority. 2 A little later, desirous
to mitigate this sternness with the suavity more
congenial to him, he spoke to his native district in
a different key.

" The last moment of Poland, her supreme cause,
salvation or eternal ruin and shame, personal free-
dom and national independence, or a terrible slavery
and the groaning of millions of men . . . the destruc-
tion of the Polish name, or her glorious place in
the ranks of nations : these are the considerations
that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you,
citizens of Lithuania. . . . Poles, now is the moment

I T. KCrzon, Kosciuszko.

» K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection,

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 125

for the amendment of eternal errors. Now is the
time to be worthy of your ancestors, to forget your-
selves in order to save the country, to stifle in your-
selves the base voice of personal interest in order
to serve the public. Now must you draw forth
your last strength, your last means, to give freedom
to your land. . . . Let us know how to die ! And
what is earthly life ? A transitory and passing
shadow, subject to a thousand accidents. What
Pole can live, if he must Hve in the state in which
till now, with his compatriots, he has been com-
pelled to Hve ? ... Oh, fellow-countrymen ! If you
spare your lives, it is that you should be wretched
slaves ; if you spare your possessions, it is that
they should be the spoils of the invaders. Who
can be so deprived of reason or so fearful, as to
doubt that we shall surely conquer, if we all manfully
desire to conquer ?

" Lithuania ! My fellow-countrymen and com-
patriots ! I was born on your soil, and in the midst
of righteous zeal for my country more especial affec-
tion is called forth in me for those among whom
I began life. . . . Look at the rest of the nation of
which you are a part. Look at those volunteers,
already assembling in each province of all the Crown,
seeking out the enemy, leaving homes and famihes
for a beloved country, inflamed with the watchword
of those fighting for the nation : Death or Victory !
Once again, I say, we shall conquer ! EarUer or
later the powerful God humbles the pride of the
invaders, and aids persecuted nations, faithful to
Him and faithful to the virtue of patriotism." ^

The moment had now arrived — in the May of

I K. Bartoszewicz, Op. cit. KoUiuszko. Periodical Publication.

126 KOSCIUSZKO

1794 — to regularize the Rising and to establish
the temporary government on a stable and more
conventional basis. Kosciuszko explained himself
fully in his proclamation of May 21st to the "citizens
of Poland and Lithuania " :

" It has pleased you, citizens, to give me the
highest proof of confidence, for you have not only
laid your whole armed strength and the use thereof
in my hands, but in addition, in the period of the
Rising, not deeming yourselves to be in the con-
dition to make a well-ordered choice of members
for the Supreme National Council, you confided that
choice to me. The greater the universal confidence
in me that I behold, the more solicitous I am to
respond to it agreeably to your wishes and to the
necessities of the nation.

" I kept to that consideration in the nomination
of members of the Council. I desired to make the
same choice that you yourselves would have made.
So I looked for citizens who were worthy of the
public trust : I considered who in private and
public life had maintained the obligations of un-
stained virtue, who were steadfastly attached to
the Rights of the Nation and the Rights of the
People, who at the time of the nation's misfortunes,
when foreign oppression and domestic crime drove
at their will the fate of the country, had most
suffered for their patriotism and their merits. It
was such men whom for the most part I summoned
to the National Council, joining to them persons
honoured for their knowledge and virtue, and adding
to them deputies capable of assisting them in their
onerous obligations."

He then says that the reason he did not nominate

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 127

the ^ Council earlier was because he was awaiting
the whole nation's confirmation of the Act of the
Rising that had been proclaimed in Cracow, and
thus " during the first and violent necessities " of
the Rising he was driven to issue manifestos and
ordinances on his own responsibility,

" With joy I see the time approaching when
nothing shall be able to justify me for the smallest
infringement of the limits you placed to my power.
I respect them because they are just, because they
emanate from your will, which is the most sacred
law for me. I hope that not only now, but when —
God grant it ! — having dehvered our country from
her enemies, I cast my sword under the feet of the
nation, no one shall accuse me of their transgression." »

PubHc moraUty did not satisfy Kosciuszko in his
choice of the men who were to rule the country.
He would have none to shape her laws and destinies
whose personal morals were lax. " What do you
want, Prince ? " were the dry words with which he
greeted Jozef Poniatowski, when the gay oificer
came into his camp to offer his sword to the Rising ;
and it is said that this ungracious reception, widely
different from Kosciuszko's usual address, was due to
the fact that he, whose own private Ufe was blame-
less, was of too Puritan a temper to be able to
overlook certain notorious aspects of Poniatowski's
character.

Still in May Kosciuszko sent Kollontaj and Ignacy
Potocki to Warsaw, and the National Council assumed
there_its_lega l. fun ctions. Among its members sat
not only Kollontaj, Potocki, and those who had
taken part in the old Polish Diet, former ministers

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

128 KOSCIUSZKO

of state and high officers, two representatives of
the clergy of the Latin and Greek rites, but the
banker Kapostas, who had been the originator of
the secret confederation that had prepared the
Rising in Warsaw and who had only narrowly escaped
Russian imprisonment, and the shoemaker Kilinski.
Thus fo£^the first time inPolish history artisans
and burghers were included in the national governing
body. The assembly was animated by that new
spirit of democracy in its noblest form in which
Ko^ciuszko himself was steeped. It carried forward
the task that the Constitution of the 3rd of May
had begun and had been forced by Poland's con-
querors to abandon. Its presidency passed by
rotation to each member, who called each other
" citizen," and who were all, without distinction of
rank and class, treated as equals. They organized the
Ministry into the ordinary departments, and'ent^red
into relations with foreign powers, among which
England, Sweden, and Austria — the latter soon to
change her face — acknowledged them as the lawful
government of state.

Having thus lightened the burden of civil rule by
securing effective colleagues, Kosciuszko, although
he did not cease to be the chief dictator of the
nation, could now more freely devote himself to
the immediate object of the Rising.

\

CHAPTER VII

THE RISING OF KO^CIUSZKO

II

We have reached the month of Ma3^_i794.
Kosciuszko and the Russian army under Denisov
were now at close grips, Denisov repeatedly attacking,
Kosciuszko beating him off. Communications with
Warsaw and all the country were impeded. Pro-
visions were almost impossible to procure. Ko^-
ciuszko's men went half starved. Burning villages,
set on fire by Denisov's soldiers, a countryside laid
waste, were the sight the Poles beheld each day,
while the homeless peasants crowded into Kosciuszko's
camp to tell him their piteous stories. Then
Denisov retreated so swiftly towards the Prussian
frontier that Kosciuszko, either through the enemy's
rapidity, or because he was detained by the civil
affairs of the government with which his hands
were just then full, and by the no less arduous task
of organizing the war in the provinces, was not able
to overtake him. At this moment the Rising
promised well. The Polish regiments, escaping ffCTn
Russian garrisons, augmented the number of the
aimy that, against unheard-of difficulties — short_of
money, short of all m iUtaiX-reAuJs.ites — Kosciuszko

^~ 9 129

130 KOSCIUSZKO

had by the end of May gathered together. From Kiev,
under the very eyes of the Russian troops in the
town. Kopec — who for his share in the national
war later underwent exile in the penal settlements
of Kamchatka — led a band of Polish soldiers to
Kosciuszko's Rising. They had already been in
communication with the Poles who were preparing
the Rising in Warsaw, when the news of the outbreak
of the insurrection reached them. Catherine II at
once resolved to disarm them and send them to the
Crimea. Kopec was despatched by the Russian
authorities to convey to the Polish soldiers flattering
promises from the Empress of pay and rewards. He
seized the opportunity for a different purpose, took
the oath of the Rising from his' compatriots and
succeeded in leading them out of Kiev. Halting on
the way at Uszomierz, he repaired in the middle
of the night to the Carmelite convent, to beg the
blessing of the old monk, Marek, who had preached
with the fire of a Bernard the Bar war, and around
whose white-robed figure among the patriots fighting
for freedom tales of miracle had gathered. Rising
from his bed of sickness, the old man went out with
Kopec, crucifix in hand, to the Polish soldiers, and
gave them his blessing, adding the words : " Go in
the name of God and you shall pass through."
Eluding the strong Russian forces that were on all
sides, they effected their escape, and, singing the
ancient battle hymn of Poland, marched to the
banners of Kosciuszko.

We have seen that Kosciuszko held the war

\ as a s acred cr usade. He enforced rig id disciplin e.

LicencfL^was-oinknown in his camp, where the

atmosphere, so eyewitnesses have recorded, was

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKQ 131

that of gaiety and ardour tempered by a grave
enthusiasm.

" There is here," writes the envoy whom
Ko^ciuszko was sending to Vienna and whom he had
summoned to the camp to receive his instructions,
" neither braggadocio nor excess. A deep silence
reigns, great order, great subordination and discipline.
The entfTusiasnTfor KoscTuszko's person in the camp
and in the nation is beyond credence. He is
a simple man, and is one most modest in conver-
sation, manners, dress. He unites with the greatest
reloTifridri and enthusiasm for the undertaken
cause much sang-froid and judgment. It seems
as though in all that he is doing there is nothing
temerarious except the enterprise itself. In practical
details he leaves nothing to chance : everything is
thought out and combined. Hi s m ay not be a
transcendental mind, oj^ one sufficiently elastic jor
politics^ His native good sense is enough for him to
e"sTimate affairs correctly and to make the best choice
at the first glance. Only love of his country animates
him. No other passion has doihinion over him.''^

The name of Kosciuszko is linked, not with victory
but with a defeat more noble than material triumph.
The watchword he had chosen for the Rising,
" Death or Victory," was no empty rhetoric; it was
stern reality. The spring of 1794 saw the insurrection
opening in its brilliant promise. From May the
success of an enterprise that could have won through
with foreign help, and not without it, declined
Kosciuszko had now to reckon not only with Russia
Prussia was about to send in her regiments of iron
against the little Polish army, of which more than

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko,

132 I^pSCIUSZKO

half were raw peasants bearing scythes and pikes,
and which was thus hemmed in by the armed legions
of two of the most powerful states in Europe.

On the 6tji of June Kosciuszko reached Szczekociny.
It was among the marshes there that the~FoIish
army met the fiercest shock of arms it had yet
experienced in the course of the Rising. " The
enemy," wrote Kosciuszko in his report, " stood
all night under arms. We awaited the dawn with
the sweetest hope of victory." These hopes were
founded on the precedent of Raclawice and on the
battles in which Kosciuszko had fought in the
United States, where he had seen British regulars
routed by the American farmers. But as hostilities
were about to begin with the morning, Wodzicki,
examining the proceedings "^through his field-glasses,
expressed his amazement at the masses moving
against the Polish army. " Surely my eyes deceive
me, for I recognize the Prussians," he said to a
Polish officer at his side. It was too true. In the
night the Prussianaxniy had come up uncj.er Frederick
William II. " We saw," says KosciuszkoT"^ that it
was not only with the Russians we had to deal, for
the right wing of the enemy was composed of the
Prussian army." The Poles fought with desperate
valour. Kosciuszko himself records the name of a
Polish sergeant who, " when both of his legs were
carried off by a cannon-ball, still cried out to his
men, ' Brothers, defend your country ! Defend her
boldly. You will conquer!"^ The charges of the
Polish reapers went far to turn the tide of victory ;
but the overwhelming numbers of Prussian soldiers,
and of scientific machines of war in a ratio of three

• Kosciuszko. Periodical Publication.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 133

to Ko^ciuszko's one, carried the day against the
Poles. Kosciuszko's horse was shot under him,
and himself slightly wounded. Only two of his
generals emerged from the battle unscathed. The
rest were either killed, including the gallant Wodzicki
and another who, like him, had been one of the
earhest promoters of the Rising, and the others
wounded, Poninski redeeming by his blood a father's
infamy.

There was no choice -left open to Kosciuszko, if he
' would save an army composed for the most part of
inexperienced volunteers, but to order a re treat ^
This retreat was carried out in perfect order. The
field was strewn with Polish dead, whom, after the
withdrawal of the Prussians, the villagers piously
buried in their parish church. There, too, on the
battlefield, lay so many corpses of Prussian soldiers
that Frederick William expressed the hope that
he would gain few more such costly victories. It was
at the close of this disastrous defeat that Kosciuszko
for a moment gave way to despair. An officer of
his — Sanguszko — met him wandering stupefied over
the battlefield when the day was lost. " I wish to
be killed," was all Sanguszko heard him say.
Sanguszko only saved his general's life by gripping
him .by the arm and forcing him within the turnpike
of a village hard by, where the shattered Polish
ranks had taken refuge. This was, however, but
a momentary faltering of Kosciuszko's soul. On
the morrow of the battle he was once more sending
his country summonses to a renewed courage and
calling up a fresh general levy.

The projvisional government of Poland was the
while negotiatingjvvith France and Austria. It was

134 KOSCIUSZKO

hoped that France would support the Rising finan-
cially, and persuade Turkey with French encourage-
ment jtodecldre war on Russia. France, preoccupied
with internal revoluTidn, had no thought to spare
for Polish affairs, and her assistance was never
gained. Nor had the Poles' overtures to Austria
any happy result. The Austrian Government gave
secret orders to arrest Kosciuszko and Madalinski
if they crossed the frontier, and the Austrian regi-
ments received instructions to attack any Polish
insurgents who should pass over into Galicia, pro-
viding that the Austrians were superior in number.
The favourable answer obtained , through a French
intermediary from the Porte arrived after Kosciuszko
was in a Russian prison. By the irony of fate he
never heard it, and it was only divulged thirty
years after his death. Thus every jiiplomatic mea ns
failed the patriot, who was no match for the machina-
tions of the European statecraft which has borne
its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have
all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources
with which he was more familiar : those of an
ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion
in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been
opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had
burst upon his country he sent out another order,
bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian
and Russian boundaries " into the provinces that
were lawfully Poland's but which had been filched
from her at the partitions, " and proclaiming there
the freedom and the rising of the Poles, summon
the peasants oppressed §i,nd ground down with slavery
to join us and universally arm against the usurpers
and their oppression : " to do the same in Russia

. THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 135

proper and Prussia, to all " who are desirous of
returning to the sweet Hberties of their own country
or desirous to obtain a free country." ^

A peasant war could at the moment be only a
chimera, impossible of realization. Does this mani-
festo prove that Kosciuszko, in a most perilous
situation, abandoned by Europe, was pushed to a
measure that he himself knew was a desperate hope ?
Or was it the generous prompting of a great dream
that beats down, that refuses to be disconcerted
by the obstacles that stand before it — that in its
failure we call visionary, but in its success the reform
for which the world has waited ? Be that as it
may, the proclamation was not without its response.
The Supreme Council modified its wording, and sent
it into Great Poland — the so-called " Prussian "
Poland — with the result that the Poles there took
up arms.

A lion striving in the toils : — such is the simile by
which a PoUsh historian describes the position of
Kosciuszko. Not one word or sign of sympathy for
his nation in her gallant struggle for life reached him
from any quarter outside his country. Nor was he
beset only by external obstacles. Difficulties inside
the state added to his cares. In answer to the
complaint of a deputation from Warsaw, dissatisfied
with the composition of the Supreme Council, he
wrote from his tent, begging the people of the city,
his " brothers and fellow-citizens," to remember that
he, whom their delegates " saw," as he expresses it,
" serving you and the country in the sweat of my
brow," had only the happiness of the sons of Poland
at heart. May, says he, his " vow made before God

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko,

136 ' KOSCIUSZKO

and the world calm all the anxieties of each citizen
and defend them from irregular steps against the
estabUshed Council. . . . My answer is short : let
us first drive out the enemy, and then we will
lay down the unchangeable foundations of our
happiness." ^

Sincerity was the groundwork of Kosciuszko's
dealings wiHThis people. The greater the reverses
which tIiercause~of~Poland encountered, the greater
must be the courage with which to conquer them.
Defeat must be regarded merely as the incentive to
victory. Thus, a few days after the battle of
Szczekociny, giving the nation a full report of the
battle, in which he mitigated none of his losses, he
ended with these words :

" Nation ! This is the first test of the stability of

thy spirit, the first day of thy Rising in which it is

free to thee to be sad, but not to be dismayed. Those

guilty of thy defeat will amend it at the first

opportunity, and they who have never deceived thee

as to their courage thirst to avenge thy misfortune

of a moment. Wouldest thou be worthy of Hberty

and self-government if thou knowest not how to

endure the vicissitudes of fate ? Nation ! Thy soil

shall be free. Only let thy spirit be high above
all."a

He then marched in haste towards Warsaw, whose
safety was threatened. On the way tidings ®f a
great disaster were brought to him — that of the
cap itulation of Cracow to the Prussians by its
Polish commander, the nallonal Tionour only re-
deemed by the gallant attempt of the Cracow

I T. Korzon, Koiciuszko.

» K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection.

I

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 137

burghers led by a book-keeper to defend the castle,
to whom the Prussian general gave the honours of
war as they marched out. The knowledge that the
Prussians were in possession of the ancient capital
of Poland, the most beloved of PoHsh cities, which
had rung with the first vows of the national uprising,
must have been bitter beyond expression to Kos-
ciuszko and to all Poland ; but again he would permit
neither himself nor his nation to meet this blow with
anything but unshaken fortitude.

" We have sustained a loss " — thus his manifesto :
" but I ask of courageous and stable souls, ought this
to make us fear ? Can the loss of one town bid us
despair of the fate of the whole commonwealth ?
The first virtue of a free man is not to despair of the
fate of his country." He speaks of Athens and the
Persians, Rome after Cannae, France driving the
EngUsh out of their country, and the heroes of his own
nation who had repulsed Sweden, Turkey, Russia, and
the Tartars. " Other men of courage and of virtue
have not doubted. Instead of breaking into profit-
less lamentations they flew to arms, and delivered
the country from the invasions of their enemies. . . .
I have told you, citizens, what my duty bade me
tell you in the conditions of to-day : beware of
indirect and alarmist impressions, beware of those
who spread them. Trust in the valour of our armies
and the fidelity of their leaders. . . . Let not Europe
say : ' The Pole is swift to enthusiasm, swifter to
discouragement.' Rather let the nations say : ' The
Poles are valiant in resolution, unterrified in disaster,
constant in fulfilment.' " ^

As if to prove the truth of his words, good news

I op. cit.

138 KOSCIUSZKO

poured in from Lithuania, Samogitia, Courland.
Bands of peasants were fighting in Lithuania. The
Rising was general in Samogitia. Courland remem-
bered that in the past she had been a member of
the Polish Commonwealth, and her citizens gave in
their act of adhesion to the Polish Rising.

Taking advantage of Frederick WilHam's incapacity
of profiting by his victory at Szczekociny, Kos-
ciuszko pushed rapidly on to Warsaw. By a series
of skilful manoeuvres, in the last days of June he
arrived outside the city, and prepared to defend her at
all costs.

Events then occurred in Warsaw of a nature to
arouse his strong condemnation. Hearing of the loss
of Cracow at the hand of a traitor, the Warsaw
populace, with the memory of Targowica, many of
whose confederates were still in their midst, staring
them in the face, dragged out from the prisons certain
Poles who had either been guilty or who were sus-
pected of treason, and executed them then and there.
Kosciuszko was in camp in the neighbourhood of
Warsaw. Any form of terrorism was abhorrent
both to his private and national conscience. So
deeply did he take to heart this outbreak of popular
fury that one of his Lithuanian commanders. Prince
Michal Oginski, who visited him at that time, heard
him declare that he would have preferred the loss of
two battles as being less prejudicial to the Polish
cause. As the head of the national government, he
at once addressed the following letter to the €ity of
Warsaw : —

" WTiile all my labours and efforts are strained to
the expulsion of the enemy, the news has reached
me that an enemy more terrible than a foreign

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 139

army is threatening us and tearing our vitals asunder.
What happened in Warsaw yesterday has filled my
heart Wfth bitterness and sadness. The wish to
punish dehnquents was well, but why were they
punished without the sentence of a tribunal ? Why fi
have you outraged the authority and sanctity of the
laws r Is that the act of a people which has raised
its sword and conquered foreign invaders in order
to restore a well-ordered liberty and the rule of
law, and the tranquil happiness that flow there-
from ? "

Warning them in impassioned accents that such
conduct was the surest means of playing into the
hands of the enemy whose desire was to promote
public confusion and thus impede the national work :

" As soon as the turn of war permits me to absent
myself for a moment from the duties entrusted to
me, I shall be among you. Perhaps the sight of a
soldier who daily risks his hfe for you will be agree-
able to you ; but I would that no sadness imprinted
on my countenance shall mar that moment. I
would that our joy shall then be full, both yours and
mine. I would that the sight of me shall remind you
that the defence of freedom and of our country should
only knit and unite us together, that only in unity
can we be strong, that by justice, not by violence, ^
shall we be safe at home and respected in the world.
Citizens ! I conjure you for the sake of the nation
and of yourselves wipe out a moment of madness by
unison, by courage against the common enemies and
by a henceforth constant respect of the laws and of
those who are appointed in the name of the law.
Know this, that he who refuses to be submissive to
the law is not worthy of freedom."

140 KOSCIUSZKO

He blames the Council of State for not having
brought the prisoners to trial before, and bids this
be "done immediately.

" And thus fulfilling what public justice exacts,
I from henceforth most severely forbid the people,
for their welfare and salvation, all lawless riots,
violence against the prisoners, laying hands on
individuals, and punishing them by death. Whoso
does not betake himself to the government by the
proper way is a rebel, a disturber of the public peace,
and as such must be punished. You whose ardent |
courage is fain to take action for the country, employ
it against the enemies, come to my camp ; we will |
receive you here as brothers." ^

Many responded to this call, Kilinski, the shoe-
maker, with the cap of liberty planted rakishly on
his head, as we may see him in his portraits, went to
Kosciuszko with the proposal that he should " catch "
the lower classes of the town. Kosciuszko gave his
hearty consent, and a regiment of these was formed
with KiHnski as their colonel. Kosciuszko was
always singularly happy in his dealings with men
and with the extraordinarily involved and delicate,
situations in which the domestic affairs of his country]
at this difficult period of her history placed him.
His tact and common sense saved the situation.
The guilty were punished. Order was restored.

The Russian and Prussian armies were advancing
to invest Warsaw. At Kosciuszko's bidding the
President of the town, Zakrzewski, whom Kosciuszko
addresses as his " beloved " Zakrzewski, had already
in stirring language summoned the citizens to take
their share in Warsaw's defence.

' K. Bartoszewicz, History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection.

4

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 141

" Old men and young men, mothers and children,
masters and servants, convents and confraternities,
and all, in whatsoever you have of strength and
health, present yourselves on the ramparts of the
city with spades, shovels, barrows, baskets. You who
are rich forget your comforts. You who are high-
born forget your rank. Stand with the poor and
hard-working citizens so that you who have drawn
life from one soil shall on one soil taste the fruits
of your safety, liberties, and possessions." ^

Crowds toiled on the ramparts, singing over their
spades the song then sung throughout Poland, calling
the Pole to the labour without which he would be
torn from his brothers, " a prisoner on his own soil."
The sons of noble families enrolled themselves in
Kilinski's burgher regiment, eager to serve under
his command. On the 13th of Jul}^ the Russian
and Prussian armies, the King of Prussia being
present with the latter, were seen from the walls of
Warsaw. The alarm was given and the cannon
fired^from the castle. The citizens took up their
places in the entrenchments with an order and a
precision that won high praise from Kosciuszko as
he went his round of inspection. With undisturbed
equanimity Kosciuszko prepared with his body of
26/)oo_men, of whom 16,000 were regulars, the rest
peasants armed with scythes7~to defend Warsaw
against 41,000 Russians and Prussians and 235
cannon. Despite the labour of the townsfolk,* the
defences of the city were weak and incomplete when
the enemy first appeared ; but during the fortnight
while the hostile armies lay encamped before Warsaw,
waiting for their heavy cannon, Kosciuszko, by dint

» A. Choioniewski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

142 KOSCIUSZKO

of his g reat gift of organization, j )ut the fortifications
into strong working order.

" His creati ve po wer," said of him one of his
adversaries, a Prussian officer, who took part in
the siege, " is worthy of admiration, since he alone,
in the midst of creating an army, fought with it
against the two best armies of Europe, having neither
their stores nor their discipUne. What would he not
have shown himself at the head of a good army, since
he did so much with peasants who knew nothing ?
Equally great in character, in devotion, in love of
his country, he lived exclusively for her freedom and
independence."^

The story would be long to tell, of how the Poles,
peasants, burghers and soldiers ahke, with the
inheritance of the fighting blood that runs in the
,^-^A veins of every son of^oland, with the fire of pafiriot-
^ ism and of measureless devotion to the chief who
led them, fought day after day the besieging army
till it was beaten. The diary of the siege is the
daily record of deeds of gallantry, of steadfastness,
of a few carrying off the honours against many.
Nor is there wanting a touch of that wild and
romantic spirit of knightly adventure which runs
all through the history of a country that for centuries
defended Christendom against Turk and Tartar.
Thus we find a PoUsh officer, Kamienski, who had
already crowned himself with glory at Szczekociny,
choosing to celebrate his name-day by inviting his
friends to come with him and stir up the Russians,
hitherto entirely passive in the operations of the
siege. This, so to speak, birthday party was swelled
by a band of eager Polish youths and by General

' A. Choloniewski, Tadeusz Ktisciuszko.

i

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 143

Madalinski, who hastened to offer himself as a
volunteer. They attacked a Russian battery, spiked
the cannon and cut the gunners to pieces. Again
and again Dombrowski, who was later to lead the
Polish Napoleonic legions, and whose name stands at
the head of the famous patriotic song so beloved of
Poland, would at Kosciuszko's laconic order, " Harass
the enemy," sally forth on some daring expedition.
Or we hear of a sixteen hours' battle, the Poles,
under a terrific fire, successfully driving the Prussians
from height to height, Kosciuszko himself com-
manding KiUnski's burgher regiment. No shirkers
were to be found in Warsaw. Under the fearful
Prussian bombardment the citizens coolly put out
the fires, and the children ran into the streets to
pick up the spent balls and take them to the arsenal,
receiving a few pence for each one that they brought
in. Once as Kosciuszko and Niemcewicz stood on
the ramparts with cannon-balls pattering about
them, Niemcewicz heard a voice shouting into his
ear through the din : " You are coming to supper
with me, aren't you ?"i The host who had the
presence of mind to arrange a party under these
circumstances was the President of Warsaw.

Even those who will not allow that Kosciuszko
was a mihtary commander of the first capacity
acknowledge that the defence of Warsaw was a
magnificejit feat. He was~Tts life and "soul7 Organ-
izingr encouraging, seeing into the closest details,
the somewhat small but strongly built figure of the
commander, clad in the peasant sukman worn, after
his example, by all his staff, including the " citizen
General Poniatowski," was to be met with at every
' J. Niemcewicz, Recollections of My Times.

144 KOSCIUSZKO

turn, his face lit up by that fire of enthusiasm
and consecration to a great cause that confers upon
its rough Uneaments their strange nobiUty. From
the 13th of July till the 6th of September, when the

enemy aFaii3one335^IlJ:il^-'^^^*^^2^° never once
took off his clothes, merely flinging himself on a httle
heap of straw in his tent on his return from his
rounds to catch what sleep he could. His very
t)resence inspired soldiers and civilians ahke to
; redoubled ardour. The s\yeetness of his smile, the
■^ ^. ^gentle and kindly word of the leader who yet knew
■ i.> "how to be obeyed and who was famed for his courage
" ^ .^^in the field, left a memory for fife with all who saw
him. Passionate admiration, the undying love of
men's hearts, were his. " Death or Yictory is
Kosciuszko's watchword, therefore it is ours," said a
Polish officer who served under him. " Father
Tadeusz " was the name by which his soldiers called
him. Invariably he spent some part of his day
among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited
with them public prayers. Often at night he and
they together went up to the teeth of the Russian
batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His
inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with
him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the
silence of these nights was broken hideously by the
wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden roar of
the cannon and crack of gunfire, by the groans of the
wounded.

The defence of Warsaw was but half of the task
that fell to Kosciuszko. The minutest particulars
were dealt with by him personally. He wrote letter
after letter, commandeering everything in the country
for the national cause : requisitioning linen from thei

,^

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 145

churches to clothe his soldiers, who in the beginning
of the siege were half naked, sending out his directions
to the leaders of the Rising in the provinces, issuing
proclamations, maintaining an enormous correspon-
dence on affairs — it is said that the number of letters
from his pen or signed by him at this time is almost
incredible — giving audiences, and conducting the civil
government of Poland.

Early in August the Prussian general, in a letter
to Orlowski, Kosciuszko's old friend, whom he had
made commandant of Warsaw, summoned the city
to surrender, while the King of Prussia addressed
himself in similar language to Stanislas Augustus,
whose part in the historical drama of the siege was
that of an inert spectator. Kosciuszko drily replied,
" Warsaw is not in the necessity to be compelled to
surrender." The Polish King rephed, not drily, to
the same effect. The fortunes of the Rising_in the
rest of the country were fluctuating,^andJiL Lithuania,
where Wilno fell, hopeless. In the beginning of
September exultation ran through Warsaw at the
news that every province of Great Poland had risen
against their Prussian conquerors. Kosciuszko char-
acteristically took up the general joy as the text
of a manifesto to the citizens of Warsaw, warning
them that Prussia w^ould, in the strength of despera-
tion, redouble her efforts against them, and urging
them to a dogged resistance. On the 4th of
September, shortly after the Poles had by a most
gallant attack carried off a signal triumph, when
Warsaw was preparing for a fresh and violent
bombardment, Kosciuszko wrote in haste to the
President : " Beloved Zakrzewski, to-day, before
daybreak, we shall certainly be attacked, and there-

10

146 KOSCIUSZKO

fore I beg and conjure you for the love of our country
that half of the citizens shall go to-day into the
line, and that if they attack all shall go out.''^

The attack did not take place ; and on the 6th_of
September the Prussians retired from Warsaw.
During the whole course of the siege, with the
exception of one post they had taken in its earliest
stage, they had gained not one inch against the
Poles defending their city with smaller numbers and
inferior ammunition. The Russians retreated with
the Prussians. They had remained almost immovable
during the siege. Neither of these two collaborators
in the destruction of Poland were on the best terms
with each other, and Catherine II had no mind to
share with Prussia the distinction, and still less
the profits, of bringing Warsaw to its knees. Austria,
although she was by way of being at war with
Kosciuszko, had held aloof from the siege, unwiUing
to commit herself, but determined on coming in for
the spoils when the Rising should be crushed out.

Kosciuszko then tasted one of the greatest triumphs
of his life^tbe. armies of the'^'ehemy were no more
seen round the city he had saved.

" By your assiduity, your valour," the National
Council wrote to him, " you have curbed the pride
and power of that foe who, after pressing upon us so
threateningly, has been forced to retreat with shame
upon his covetous intentions. The Council knows
only too well the magnitude of the labours which you
brought to the defence of this city, and therefore
cannot but make known to you that most lively
gratitude and esteem with which all this city is
penetrated. "2

I T. Korzon, Kosciusxko. * Op. cit.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 147

Further, it expressed the wish that Kosciuszko
should show himself to a grateful people in some
solemn function.

To this Kosciuszko politely replied, declining
to take any share in a public honour which it was
against every dictate of his nature to accept.

" I have read with the greatest gratitude and
emotion the flattering expressions of the Supreme
National Council. I rejoice equally with every good
citizen at the liberation of the city from the enemy
armies. I ascribe this to nothing else but to Provi-
dence, to the valour of the Polish soldiers, to the zeal
and courage of the citizens of Warsaw, to the dihgence
of the government. I place myself entirely at the
disposition of the Supreme National Council : in
what manner and when do you wish the celebration
to take place ? My occupations will not permit me
the pleasure of being with you. I venture to trust
that the God who has delivered the capital will
deliver our country likewise. Then, as a citizen, not
as a bearer of office, will I offer my thanks to God
and share with every one the universal joy."i

He stayed in his camp and, in order to avoid an
ovation, did not enter Warsaw. No public triumph
was celebrated, but Masses of thanksgiving were
sung in every church of the city.

Although he was the ruler of the state, Kosciuszko
lived in the utmost simplicit3^ He had refused the
palace^That was offered to him, .and took up his
quarters in a tent. When receiving guests his modest
rrie^aT was spread under a tree. Asked by Oginski
why he drank no Burgundy, his reply was that
Oginski, being a great magnate, might permit himself

» op. cit.

148 KOSCIUSZKO

such luxuries, " but not the commander who is now
hving at the expense of an oppressed commonwealth."
When taken unawares by a royal chamberlain he
was discovered blowing up his own fire, preparing
some frugal dish.

In the first flush of joy at the hberation of Warsaw,
he wrote to Mokronowski :

" Warsaw is delivered. There are no longer either
Muscovites or Prussians here : we will go and seek
them out. Go, my friend, and seek them out, and
dehver Lithuania from the invaders. "^

But Kosciuszko's steadiness of outlook was not for
an instant relaxed by the signal success he had won.
Untiring vigilance and redoubled activity were his
order of the day, both for himself and his fellow-
Poles. The short breathing-space that followed the
retirement of the enemy was devoted by him to the
pressing internal concerns of the nation, taxation and
so forth. He was determined on perfect freedom
for all classes and all rehgions in Poland. He ordered
the erection of new Orthodox places_ol^prship for
the members of the Eastern Church. He enrolled a
Jewish legion to fight in Poland's army, and com-
rnanded that this regiment should be equipped and
treated on equal terms with the PoUsh soldiers of
the Repubhc. In a transport of gratitude the
Jewish leaders called upon their fellow-believers to
rise for Poland in confidence of victory under " our
protector, Tadeusz Kosciuszko," who " is without
doubt the emissary of the eternal and Most High
God." 2

Kosciuszko was a generous enemy. His Russian

1 Letters of Kosciuszko.

2 K. Falkenstein, Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Wroclaw, 1831 (Polish).

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 149

captives he treated with a courtesy and kindness
that were ill repaid during his own march into Russia
as a prisoner in Russian hands. He directed that
services in their own language and faith should be
held for the Prussian prisoners, A letter of his
remains that he wrote to the Lutheran minister of
the evangelical church in Warsaw, expressing his
gratitude that this clergyman's pulpit had been a
centre of patriotism, at a time " when nations who
love freedom must win the right to their existence
by streams of blood," and telling the pastor that he
has issued orders for the Prussian prisoners to be
taken to church in the " conviction that you will
not refuse them your fatherly teaching." ^

This letter and the snuff-box that accompanied it
were preserved as relics in the pastor's family.

The Bohemian and Hungarian prisoners were by
Kosciuszko's command released, " in memory of the
bond that united the Hungarians and Czechs, when
free countries, with the Polish nation." We have
lived to see the descendants of that Hungarian
generation spreading untold atrocities through
Polish towns and villages as the tool of Prussia in
the recent war.

The triumph over the Prussians was but a temporary
respite. The Prussian army returned to the invest-
ment of Warsaw7""at"soffle distance from the town
itself. The ambassador of the King of Prussia was
treating in Petersburg with Catherine II for the
third partition of Poland. She on her side sent
Suvorov with a new and powerful arm y^agajost „the
Polish The Austrians were already in the country.
Kosciuszko, fighting for life against Russia and

I Tygodnik Illustrowany . Warsaw, 1881 (Polish).

150 KOSCIUSZKO

Prussia, had no army to send against the third of
his foes. His generals were engaging the enemy in
different parts of Poland, at times with success,
as notably Dombrowski in Great Poland, where
events continued to be the one gleam of hope in these
last days of the Rising, but again with terrible
defeats, such as Sierakowski experienced by the
army of Suvorov, near Kosciuszko's old home.
Kosciuszko deceived himself with no illusions: but
neither fear nor despair found an entry into his
soul. " He did not lose heart," writes one who never
left him. " He turned and defended himself on all
sides." I Wherever his presence was most urgently
needed, thither he repaired. Accompanied only by
Niemcewicz he rode at full speed into Lithuania to
rally the spirits of Mokronowski's corps, depressed
by defeat. He returned at the same breakneck
pace, miraculously, says his companion, escaping
capture by the Cossacks who were swarming over
the country. On this occasion, Princess Oginska,
at whose house the travellers took a hasty dinner,
pushing on immediately afterwards, gave Kosciuszko
a beautiful turquoise, set with diamonds. It was to
be among the Russian spoils at Maciejowice.

The proclamation that Kosciuszko addressed to the
Lithuanian soldiers, found later in his handwriting
among his letters, bears its own testimony to the
soul of the leader who, in the face of strong armies
marching upon his doomed nation, would give no
entrance to despair or discouragement. Expressing
the joy he experienced at being among the soldiers
of Lithuania, on whose soil he was born :

" My brothers and comrades ! If till now the

* J. Niemcewicz, op, cit.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 151

results of your toil and struggles have not entirely
corresponded to the courage and intrepidity of a
free nation, I ascribe this, not to the superior valour
of our enemies (for what could there be more valiant
than a Polish army ?) ; but I ascribe it to a want
of confidence in our own strength and courage, to
that false and unfortunate idea of the enemy's
power which some fatality has sown among your
troops. Soldiers valiant and free ! Beware of those
erroneous conceptions that wrong you ; thrust them
from your hearts ; they are unworthy of Poles. . . .
A few thousand of your ancestors were able to
subdue the whole Muscovite state, to carry into
bondage her Tsars and dictate to her rulers, and
you, the descendants of those same Poles, can,
wrestling for freedom and country, fighting for your
homes, families and friends, doubt ... if you will
conquer. . . . Remember, I repeat, that on our
united courage and steadfastness the country must
depend for her safety, j/ou for your freedom and
happiness."

He threatens with the utmost rigour of martial law
any who shall attempt to undermine the spirit of
the army by representing the difficulty of opposing
the enemy, or similar offences. "^

" It were a disgrace to any man to run away, but
for the free man it were a disgrace even to think of
flight."

" I have spoken to the cowards who, God grant,
will never be found among you. Now do I speak
to you, valiant soldiers, who have fulfilled the duties
of courageous soldiers and virtuous citizens, who
have driven the enemies even to the shores of the
sea. ... I speak to those who have in so many

152 KOSCIUSZKO

different battles spread wide the glorj' of the Pohsh
name. Accept through me the most ardent gratitude
of the nation."!

In the same month, towards the end of September,
he sent his country what proved to be Ms last message,
still from his tent outside Warsaw.

" Freedom, that gift beyond estimate for man on
earth, is given by God only to those nations which
by their perseverance, courage, and constancy in all
untoward events, are worthy of its possession. This
truth is taught us by free nations which after long
struggle full of labours, after protracted sufferings
manfully borne, now enjoy the happy fruits of their
courage and perseverance.

" Poles ! You who love your country and liberty
equally with the valorous nations of the south, you
who have been compelled to suffer far more than
others oppression and disdain ; Poles, who, pene-
trated with the love of honour and of virtue, can
endure no longer the contempt and destruction of
the Polish name, who have so courageously risen
against despotism and oppression, I conjure you grow
not cold ; do not cease in your ardour and in your
constancy."

He tells them he knows only too well that in a
war with the invaders their possessions are exposed
to the danger of loss ; " but in this perilous moment
for the nation we must sacrifice all for her and,
desirous to taste of lasting happiness, we must not
shrink from measures, however bitter, to ensure it
to ourselves. Never forget that these sufferings (if
we may call such sacrifices for our country by that
name !) are only passing, and that contrariwise the

» Letters of Ko^ciuszko.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 153

freedom and independence of our land prepare for
you uninterrupted days of happiness. "'

These were the numbered days of Kosciuszko's
Rising. A Russian army of highly trained troops
under the able command of Suvorov was marching
on Warsaw. To prevent Suvorov's juncture with the
forces of the Russian general, Fersen, Kosciuszko
prepared to leave Warsaw and give Fersen battle.
Beset from every quarter, he had been compelled to
divide his army in order to grapple with the powerful
armies against him. Sierakowski had, as we have
seen, been defeated. There was not a moment to
be lost. On the 5th of October Kosciuszko confided
to Niemeewicz that by daybreak on the following
morning he intended to set out to take command of
Sierakowski's detachment. He spent the evening in
the house of Zakrzewski, for the last time among
his dearest and most faithful collaborators, Ignacy
Potocki, Kollontaj, and others. The next morning by
dawn he was off with Niemeewicz. They galloped
over the bridge at Praga. A month later that bridge
was to run red with the blood of PoHsh women and
children ; its broken pillars were to ring with the
agonizing cries of helpless fugitives as they fled from
Suvorov's soldiers only to find death in the river
below. The Hfe of Poland depending on his speed,
for Fersen at the head of twenty thousand men was
nearing both Warsaw and Suvorov, Kosciuszko, with
his companion, rode at hot haste. They only paused
to change horses, remounting the miserable steeds
of the peasants, sorry beasts with string for bridle
and bit, and saddles without girths ; but none others
were to be found in a land laid waste by the Cossacks

I K. Falkenstein, Tadeusz Koiciuszko.

154 KO^CIUSZKO

and by the marches of armed men. At four in the
afternoon Kosciuszko rode into Sierakowski's camp,
where he at once held a council of war. The army
under his command moved on October 7th, The day
was fair, glowing with the lights of the Polish autumn.
The soldiers were gay of heart, and sang as they
marched through villages ruined by the Cossacks —
to defeat. They halted at one of these villages where
the Russians had been before them. The staff spent
the night in the house of the squire. The furniture
had been hacked to pieces by the Cossacks, books,
utensils, all destroyed. That evening a courier rode
in to convey to Kosciuszko the intelligence that
Dombrowski had won a victory over the Prussians
at Bydgoszcz — rechristened by Prussia, Bromberg —
and had taken the town. It was Kosciuszko's last
hour of joy. He published the news through the
camp, amidst the soldiers' acclamations, bidding them
equal Dombrowski's prowess with their own. With
an old friend of his Niemcewicz walked in the court-
yard of the house where the staff was quartered.
A flock of ravens wheeled above them. " Do you
remember your Titus Livy ? " asked Niemcewicz's
companion. " Those ravens are on our right. It is
a bad sign." " It might be so for the Romans,"
replied the poet, " but not for us. You will see
that though it seems difficult we shall smash the
Muscovites." " I think so too," answered the other.'
In this spirit the Polish soldiers advanced to the
fatal field of Maciejowice. Tents they had none.
Fires were lit, around which they stood or sat, arms
in hand.

On the 8th of October rain poured, and the wearied

' J. Niemcewicz, Notes sur ma Captivite d Saint -Petersbourg.

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 155

soldiers rested. On the 9th the army went forward.
Again over that last march the strange beauty of
a Polish autumn shed a parting melancholy glory.
The way led through forests flaming with the red,
gold, and amber with which the fall of the year paints
the woods of Poland. At four o'clock the forest
was left behind, and the army emerged near the
village of Maciejowice. Kosciuszko, taking Niem-
cewicz and a few lancers, pushed on to reconnoitre
the position. A scene of terrible splendour met
the gaze of the doomed leader. The Vistula
stretched before him, reddening in the sunset, and
as far as the eye could reach lay on its shores the
Russian army, their weapons flashing to the sinking
sun. The hum of multitudes of men, the neighing
of horses, the discordant clamours of a camp, filled
the air. Advancing, Kosciuszko with his little troop
had a skirmish with the Cossacks. The general
and Niemcewicz were twice surrounded, and narrowly
escaped with their lives. Then with the evening the
Polish army came up, and hostilities ceased.

The village of Maciejowice stood in a hollow outside
a wood among marshes. The night quarters of the
staff were in the manor-house belonging to the
Zamojski family. It, too, had been ravaged by
Jiussian soldiers, the family portraits in a great hall
on the first floor slashed by Cossack sabres, the
contents of the library wantonly destroyed. No
foreboding seemed to have hung over the Polish
officers as they sat at supper. They were in high
spirits, and peals of laughter greeted the quaint
jscraps that Niemcewicz read out from a handful
of old Polish newspapers he had hit upon intact in
ja chest. Shortly after supper Kosciuszko lay down

156 KOSCIUSZKO

for a few hours' sleep ; at midnight he rose and
dictated to Niemcewicz his instructions for the day.
Before sunrise the Russians were moving to the
attack, and Ko^ciuszko was on his horse. Impelled
by necessity, he gave orders to fire a village that
lay in the line of the Russian advance. The
lamentations of the women and children as they
fled into the woods from the flames that were
destroying their all, the wild cries of frightened birds
and beasts, the volumes of smoke rising over ruined
homes, combined to make up a scene of horror,
unforgettable by those who witnessed it, and that
must have wrung a heart such as Kosciuszko's.
Under a steady Polish fire the Russian soldiers and
cannon, advancing through mud and marsh, sank
at every step. For three hours the Poles kept the
enemy at bay, standing steadily against his terrific
fire with artillery that was no match for his. The
Polish staff were covered with branches that the
Russian balls sent crashing from the trees. Kos-
ciuszko himself fired the cannon with an accuracy
of aim under which the Russians wavered. It
appeared as though they were about to retreat.
But the enemy's superiority of numbers, the strength
of his artillery, began to tell, and his heavy fire
sowed death among the Polish ranks. A shell
burst between Kosciuszko, his aide-de-camp, Fiszer,
and Niemcewicz, but left them unharmed. What
Niemcewicz, who lived through it, describes as a
hailstorm of bullets, grapeshot and shells, poured
down upon the Polish lines. How any came out
alive to tell the tale was to him a marvel. The dead
lay in heaps. Not a Pole stirred from his post under
this rain of fire. Each fell where he stood. Every

I

THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO 157

artillery horse was by now killed or mutilated.
Then at that moment — it was past midday — the
Polish cannon were silent : the ammunition had
run out. Riding madly through the Pohsh ranks,
Kosciuszko shouted to his soldiers to fight on, to
keep up heart, Poninski with fresh supplies was
coming up. He did not come, and the rumour of
treachery, never, however, proved, gathered about a
name that was already of ill repute to a Polish ear.
Galled by standing motionless without ammunition,
a Polish battalion rashly charged, and the Russians
broke through the Polish line. Niemcewicz, rushing
up to repulse them at the head of a Lithuanian
squadron, was wounded, captured by the Russians,
and his men dispersed. Another faithful friend of
Kosciuszko, Kopec, struggUng to cut a way through
for his general, and thrice wounded, was in his turn
taken prisoner. The little Polish army was now
encircled on all sides by the Russians, attacking in
their whole strength. Then ensued a fearful bayonet
charge in which the Poles were mowed down like
corn before the sickles, each soldier falUng at his
post, yielding not to the enemy of their country,
but only to death. The battaUon of Dzialynski —
he who had been among the most ardent propagators
of the Rising in its beginning — died to the last man.
One who passed over the battlefield before the close
of day shuddered at the sight of those serried rows
of the dead, testifying by the order in which they
lay to the unbroken discipline in which they had
died. Of that battlefield, such is the phrase, " the
enemy only remained master by treading over the
ranks of the corpses of our soldiers, still occupying
after death the same place they had occupied in the

o*

158 KO^CIUSZKO . /7fV '

7!
battle."^ Without hope of victpi-jf the PoUsh rifle-
men fired till their last (^tridg^ was spent. With
the Russians on all sid6s'*~(5rthem the gunners,
standing at the cannons, had worked till the end.
A final desperate effort was made by Kosciuszko to
form up a front with a small band of his soldiers.
His third horse was killed beneath him. He mounted
another, when a wave of Russian cavalry swept in
upon the broken remains of the Polish army, and all
was over. Fighting in a hand-to-hand struggle in
a marsh, Kosciuszko fell, covered with wounds,
unconscious, and was taken prisoner by three young
Russian ensigns. Only two thousand of .the Poles
who had fought at Maciejowice returned to Warsaw
from that tragic and heroic field. Conducted to
the manor where a few hours before he had slept
by the side of Kosciuszko, Niemcewicz found there
Kosciuszko's devoted officers, Sierakowski, Kniazie-
wicz, who had commanded the left wing at the
battle. Kopec and Fiszer — all prisoners of war. The
last drop was added to their cup of bitterness when
they heard that nothing was known of the fate of
their beloved leader, save the report that he was
slain.

' J. Niemcewicz, Notes suy ma Captivite a Saint •Petersbourg.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RUSSIAN PRISON

Late in the afternoon of that ill-fated day a stretcher,
roughly and hastily put together, was carried by
Russian soldiers into the courtyard of the manor.
The prisoners saw that on it lay the scarcely breathing
form of Kosciuszko. His body and head were
covered with blood. He was insensible and appar-
ently at the point of death. The dead silence as he
was carried in was only broken by the sobs of his
Polish officers. The surgeon dressed his wounds,
and he was then taken to a large hall and left to
the companionship of Niemcewicz, with Russian
grenadiers posted inside each door. In the evening
the hall was required by Fersen for dinner and his
council of war, and Kosciuszko, still unconscious,
was transferred, Niemcewicz following him, to a
room over the cellar.

Towards the end of the battle the fiercest contest
had raged around the Zamojski manor. At the last
a hundred Polish soldiers had in the desperation of
extremity defended the house, and fought it out
till no round of ammunition remained to them. The
Russians then burst in, and despatched at the point
of the bayonet every Pole in every room of the
building, including the cellar, where the only sur-

159

160 KOSCIUSZKO

vivors of the heroic band took up their final stand.
The bloodshed stopped when each man of them was
dead or dying, and not before. The moans of those
lying in their last agony in this cellar of death were,
when the laughter and merrymaking of the Russian
officers died away with the course of the hours,
the only sound that Niemcewicz heard, as by the
couch of his passionately loved and apparently
dying leader he lay through the bitter cold of the
October night, weeping not only for a dear friend,
but for his country. At sunrise Kosciuszko spoke,
as if waking from a trance. Seeing Niemcewicz, with
his arm bandaged, beside him, he asked why his
friend was wounded, and where they were. " Alas !
we are prisoners of Russia," said Niemcewicz. " I am
with you, and will never leave you,"^ Tears rose to
Kosciuszko's eyes, as he made reply that such a
friend was a consolation in misfortune. The entrance
of Russian ofiicers, deputed to keep guard over
them, interrupted the conversation. They were
watched each moment, and their words and actions
reported. Later on Fersen came in and addressed
Kosciuszko courteously, speaking in German, which
Niemcewicz — for Kosciuszko knew neither German
nor Russian — interpreted. At midday a deafening
discharge of musketry and cannon smote painfully
upon the prisoners' ears : it was the salvo of joy
for the Russian victory.

On the I3thjgf_0ct^ber the Russian army marched,
and Kosciuszko and his fellow-Poles began their
long, lad journey to a Russian prison. Kosciuszko
travelled in a small carriage with a surgeon,
Niemcewicz and the Polish generals in a separate

' J. Niemcewicz, Noies sur ma Captivite a Saint-Pitersbourg.

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 161

conveyance, while the rest of the prisoners went on

foot. Detachments of Russian cavalry rode in

front and behind. An immense train of wagons,

filled with the loot carried off from Polish homes,

Polish cannon captured on the field, a car bearing

the Polish flags with their national device of eagles,

embroidered heavily with silver, added the final

drop of bitterness to the lot of the defeated sons of

,^i a proud and gallant race. On the halt held the

■^ following day messengers came up from Warsaw,

bringing Kosciuszko his personal effects and a letter

, from the National Council, conveying expressions of

I the highest eulogy and deep sympathy, with a present

of four thousand ducats, of which Kosciuszko gave

half to his fellow-prisoners.

The scene in Warsaw when the news of Ko^ciuszko's

captivity reached it was, writes a Pole who was then

in the town, the saddest sight he ever saw.^ In every

public place, in every class of society, in every home,

I the one refrain, broken by sobs, was : " Kosciuszko is

' no more." The leader was gone ; but the men and

I women who were met wandering, weeping, in the

I streets, wringing their hands and mourning for the

I man they and the country had lost together, had

i no thought of giving up the struggle for their nation.

" Neither the duty of a citizen nor thy example

permits us to despair for our country," wrote the

National Council to Kosciuszko. The war was

carried on, and the citizens of Warsaw went in

their thousands to the ramparts, as in Kosciuszko's

time, to hold the town against Suvorov's siege.

Together with their dispatches to Kosciuszko, the
National Council sent a letter to Fersen, offering to

' M. Oginski, Memoir es. Paris, 1826.
11

162 KOSCIUSZKO

give up all their Russian prisoners in exchange for
Kosciuszko alone. The Russian general refused.
Two days later Fersen received orders to join Suvorov,
and the prisoners with a large detachment of Russian
troops under Krushtzov were sent on into Russia
by an immensely roundabout route.

The first part of the march led through Polish
territory. The Pohsh prisoners watched, powerless,
the ravages committed on their unhappy country by
the army with which they travelled. The contents
of mansion, shop, hut, were alike stolen. Even
children's toys swelled the booty. Although the
wound on Kosciuszko's head began to improve, he
had lost the use of his legs and could not move without
being carried ; yet a Russian guard watched him
incessantly. The rumour had gone round the Polish
countryside that he had escaped from Maciejowice,
and that the Russians had some feigned captive
in his place. In their halts Krushtzov therefore
insisted on the Polish proprietor of the villages, or
the chief inhabitants of the towns, where the pro-
cession passed the night, presenting themselves in
Kosciuszko's room to see with their own eyes that
he was in truth the prisoner of Russia. In strong
indignation at this insult to Kosciuszko, Niemcewicz
writes, with excusable bitterness, that hitherto men
had been known to make a show of wild beasts ;
now " wild beasts showed off the man."^ At these
interviews no free speech was possible between the
fellow-Poles, as the guards were always present.
They could only exchange the sympathy of sorrowing
looks and equally sad, but guarded, words.

So long as the army marched through Poland,

I J. Niemcewicz, op. cit.

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 168

Kosciuszko had the mournful satisfaction of receiving
here and there on the road some last token of recog-
nition and honour from his compatriots. At one
spot where the Russian officers quartered themselves
on the castle of the Sanguszkos, while Kosciuszko and
his companions were lodged in the wretched village
inn, the Princess, unable to show her compassion
in any other way, provided the Poles with all
their meals, prepared by her chef. Another Polish
princess, whose mansion was twenty miles distant,
and who was no other than Ludwika Lubomirska,
sent over her 3'oung son with clothes and books for
the prisoners. They were still in this village when
a courier arrived, bearing the news of the fall of
Warsaw, and of the massacre of Praga which has
gained for the name of Suvorov its eternal infamy in
the history of Poland. Thirteen thousand of the civilian
inhabitants of Warsaw, men, women, and children,
were put to the sword, immolated in the flames, or
drowned in the Vistula as they fled over a broken
bridge before the fury of the Russian soldiers. Thus
ended the Rising of Kosciuszko. If under one aspect
it 'closed in failure, on the other side it had proved to
tlie admiration and belated sympathy of all Europe
how Poles could fight for freedom. Moreover, it laid
the' foundation for those later Polish insurrections in
the cause of liberty which, no less heroic than the
Rising of Kosciuszko, and with a sequel as tragic,
are honoured among the world's splendid outbursts of
nationalism.. ^ " ''

Following close on this blow came painful partings
between Kosciuszko and his devoted comrades,
Kniaziewicz, Kopec, and the remaining Polish officers.
Kosciuszko, with Niemcewicz and Fiszer, were separ-

N.

164 KOSCIUSZKO

ated from the main army, and sent on under the
escort of a small body of Russian officers and soldiers.
With hearts torn by grief they said farewell to their
friends, never expecting to see them again. Haunted
by the thought of the unknown fate before them and
by the terrible news from their country, they set out
through a snowstorm that blotted out all discernible
objects, the horses sinking into the snow which
clogged the carriage wheels at every turn. Rigor-
ously guarded, each word of their conversation
noted and handed on to the commander, the prisoners
were conveyed in as great secrecy as possible, and
were not allowed to halt at any large town. At
Czernihov two Cossack officers brought them a tray
of fine apples, telling them — they spoke in Polish —
that Polish blood flowed in their veins and that they
deeply deplored the lot of the captives. More they
were about to add when the Russian guard drove them
off. Traversing White Ruthenia, a country that had
so lately been Poland's, the people watched them
pass, not in curiosity, but rather with looks of interest
and compassion. As they changed horses before a
posting-house in Mohylev a tall, thin old peasant,
in Polish costume, was observed by the prisoners
among the groups that pressed around them to be
gazing at them with eyes filled with pity, till at last,
unable to contain himself longer, he broke his way
through to them, weeping, only to be thrust aside
by the Russian officer in charge. At Witebsk, again,
a band of recruits in the Russian army respectfully
uncovered their heads as Kosciuszko passed, and he
knew that they were Poles. These little incidents
cast their transitory gleam over the journey north,
as the party pushed on to Petersburg, across the

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 165

desolate snow-covered plains of Russia, through
the piercing cold of the Russian winter. At night
the ' fires of the aurora borealis threw a strange,
blood-red light over the white, unending country. The
gloomy silence that held all nature in its grip was only
broken by an occasional crash of a bough under the
weight of snow in the great forests through which
the party passed, or by the wild, sad music of the
Russian songs with which the postilions beguiled the
night hours of their journey. Such was the accom-
paniment to Kosciuszko's forebodings for his future
and that of his fellow-captives, and to his greater
anguish over the fate of his nation.

Petersburg was reached on the loth of December.
The prisoners were hurried at night through side
streets, and then put into boats and taken by
mysterious waterways into the heart of the Peter-
Paul fortress. Here they were separated, Niemcewicz
and Fiszer led to a large hall,' and Kosciuszko con-
ducted to another room. That was the last they
saw of each other for two years. On the morning
after his first night of solitary confinement Niem-
cewicz was brought coffee in a cup that he recognized
as Kosciuszko's property. This alone told him that
Kosciuszko was not far off ; and cheered by that
thought he was able, says he, " to resign himself to
everything."''

The narrative of Niemcewicz, to which we owe the
story of each step of the journey into Russia, can now,
beyond a vague report that the poet from time to
time gleaned from his jailors, tell us next to nothing
more of Kosciuszko in a Russian prison. Detailed
information from other sources is wanting, and we

' J. Niemcewicz, op. cit.

166 KOSCIUSZKO

have only a few certain facts to go upon. F or the
first few months of his imprisonment, Kosciuszko was
Kept in the fortress as a rebel, not as a vanquished
enemy. " Rebel " was the term by which he was
officially styled. Before December was out, he was
subjected to the usual ordeal of the Russian prison :
the inquisition. A paper was handed in to him, with
a long string of questions, which he was ordered to
answer in his own handwriting, on the relations of
the Rising with foreign powers, the sources of its
finances, and so on. It also contained a close cate-
chetical scrutiny upon the conversations he had
held with specified persons at such and such a date,
and on the ins and outs of different incidents during
the insurrection, that was a severe tax on the memory
of a wounded man. All that is positively known
of the inquisition are the questions and Kosciuszko's
replies. What lay beneath it — what were the means
of moral torture wielded by those who conducted the
inquiry, the pitfalls spread for a prisoner who lay
helpless, racked by pain from the wound in his head ;
what was the ingenuity employed to wrest his answers
from him, whether he willed or no, are equally well
known, says Kosciuszko's historian, Korzon, who had
himself more than sixty years later languished in a
Russian dungeon, to those acquainted with the
methods of the Russian political prison. That
Kosciuszko, being at the mercy of the enemy who
interrogated him, spoke as openly as he did regarding
:the measures that he was prepared to take with
France and Turkey against Russia, is eloquent, says
ithe same historian, of the force of his character
land of his conquest over physical infirmity.^ His

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 167

answers are short and pithily clear. He speaks the
truth, says another Pole, or he does not speak at
all.i

His high qualities began to gain upon his conquerors.
At the outset Catherine II in her correspondence
speaks contemptuously of him as " a fool in all the
meaning of that word"; but presently her language
changes to a more complimentary, if still patronizing,
tone, and after some months slie^had him removed
from the fortress and conveyed to the Orlov palace,
as a place more suited to his physically shattered
condition. He was allowed to be carried into the
garden and to take drives in the town under guard.
He was provided with a good table, from which he
daily sent meals to the Polish prisoners in the fortress.
Always deft with his fingers, he whiled away the
hours by working at a turning-lathe. A wooden
sugar-basin that he made during his imprisonment
Js now in the Polish Museum at Rapperswil,
Switzerland.

All this time he lay sick and crippled. The wounds
he had carried from Maciejowice, unskilfully tended
by the Russian surgeons, remained unhealed : grief
of mind for his country did the- rest. An English
doctor named Rogerson attended him. He wrote :
" The physical and mental forces of that upright
man are nearly exhausted, as the result of long
sufferings. I am losing hopes of curing him. He
has suffered so much in body and soul that his
organism is entirely destroyed."^

Two years passed thus. In the November of
1796 there was an unusual stir in the fortress, which
to the Poles immured there could mean only one
» op. cit. » op. cit.

168 KOSCIUSZKO

thing : the death of their arch-enemy, Catherine II.
After a few days the suspicion was confirmed. The
Empress was scarcely in her coffin before the son she
had hated, now Paul I, entered Kosciuszko's prison,
accompanied by his retinue and by the Tsarewitch,
Alexander, on whom for a transitory moment the
fondest hopes of Poland were to rest, and whose
friendship with a son of the house of Czartoryski is
one of the romances of history. The Tsarewitch
embraced Kosciuszko, and his father uttered the
words : "I have come to restore your liberty." The
shock was "so overwhelming that the prisoner could
not answer. The Tsar seated himself by Kosciuszko's
side : and then ensued this remarkable colloquy
between the Tsar of all the Russias and the hero of
Polish freedom, which is known to us more or less
textually from a Russian member of the court who
was present, and also from the accounts of the
Polish prisoners, who eagerly picked up its details
which Niemcewicz collected and recorded.

" I always pitied your fate," said the Tsar, who,
in the earlier days of his reign, through the wild
eccentricity that was more correctly speaking mad-
ness, was not devoid of generous instincts ; " but
during my mother's rule I could do nothing to help
you. But I have now taken it as the first duty of
my sovereignty to confer freedom upon you. You
are therefore free."

Kosciuszko bowed and, after expressing his thanks,
replied :

" Sire, I have never grieved for my own fate, but
I shall never cease to grieve over the fate of my
country."

" Forget your country," said Paul. " The same

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 169

lot has befallen her as so many other states of
which only the memory has remained in history;
and in that history you will always be gloriously
remembered."

" Would rather that I should be forgotten," was
Ko^ciuszko's reply, " and my country remain free.
Certainly many states have fallen, but there is no
example like the fall of Poland. ... It was in the
very moment of her uprising, just when she was
desirous to attain liberty of rule, precisely when she
showed the greatest energy and patriotism, that
Poland fell."

" But confess," went on the Tsar, " that this
freedom of yours did not agree with the interests of
the neighbouring states, and that your countrymen
themselves served as the instrument of the destruction
of their country."

" Excuse me, Your Imperial Majesty, from further
explanations on that point, for I can neither think nor
speak without strong feehng about my country's
fall."

" You do not offend me," graciously repHed Paul ;
" but on the contrary I esteem you the more, for it
is the first time that I have spoken to a citizen whom
I recognize as really loving his country. If at least
the greater part of the Poles thought as you do,
Poland might still exist."

" Sire," said Kosciuszko, with deep emotion,
" that greater part was certainly there. If only Your
Imperial Majesty could have been the eyewitness of
that virtue, that patriotism, of which they gave no
common proofs in the last Rising ! I know how men
tried to give Your Imperial Majesty the falsest and
worst ideas about our nation, because they repre-

/~-,

170 KOSCIUSZKO

sented them in the eyes of the whole world as a
horde of noisy ruffians, intolerant of rule and law,
and therefore unworthy of existence. Virtuous and
universal zeal only for the bettering of the country's lot,
for freedom from oppression and disorder, was called
sedition ; the best desires of good citizenship were
accounted as a crime, and as the result of a brawling
Jacobinism : finally, not onl}^ against all justice, but
against the true interests of Russia, the destruction
of the unhappy country by the complete dismem-
berment of her territory was given out as the most
salutary counsel. How many outrages, perilous for
the lot of every state, have resulted from it ! " said
he, in words of which we all too clearly have seen
the truth to-day. " How many fearful consequences,
what universal misery for its victims ! "

" See what fire ! " said the Tsar, turning to his
officers.

" Pardon me, Sire," said Kosciuszko. " Perhaps I
was carried too far — perhaps ; " he hesitated.

But no, the Tsar hastened to reassure him, he had
given the monarch food for thought, he had spoken to
his heart. Kosciuszko must ask for every comfort
he required till he left Petersburg, and must trust
Paul " as a friend. "»

This was the first of more than one interview
between Kosciuszko and the Tsar. At the second
Kosciuszko begged for the release of all the Polish
prisoners of the Rising scattered in Russia and
Siberia. He and his comrades were now permitted
to visit each other. Niemcewicz has recorded his
painful impression as he saw his friend for the first
time since they had entered the prison together,
' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

THE RUSSIAN PRISON 171

lying with bandaged head and crippled limb, with
ravaged nerves, speaking faintly and making signs
to warn Niemcewicz when the latter raised his voice
that spies were listening at the door.

But Paul's pardon was not unconditional. Before
granting'a' general amnesty he required of Ko^ciuszko
and the leading Polish prisoners an oath of allegiance
to himself and his successors. Thus Kosciuszko was
called upon to face the bitterest sacrifice that even
he had yet had to confront. On him depended
whether the prison gates should be opened to twelve
thousand fellow-Poles. At the cost of the most
sacred feelings of his heart, after private consultations
with Ignacy Potocki, who was among the prisoners
in the fortress, and with whom he agreed that there
was no alternative but to submit, Kosciuszko accepted
the intolerable condition laid upon him, and took^
the oath. Upon the agony of that internal conflict
he, with his accustomed reticence, remained silent.
That there was some external pressure of a most
harassing description on the part of the Russian
ministers which tore the oath from his lips is proved
by his own words in his letter to the Tsar two years
later.

His intention was now to go to America, by
Sweden and England. Rogerson, whose strong esteem
he had gained, wrote to his friend, the Russian
ambassador in London, begging him for the sake of
their friendship to do all that he could for Kosciuszko,
. and entering into minute recommendations to ensure
the latter' s well-being in England. Kosciuszko had
aroused a like admiration in the imperial family.
At the farewell audience in the Winter Palace he was
received with 4 pomp detestable to his every instinct,

172 KOSCIUSZKO

and carried in Catherine's wheel chair into the Tsar's
private room. The Tsar loaded him with gifts,
including a carriage especially adapted to the recum-
bent position in which he was forced to travel. The
Tsaritsa chose to give him a costly turning-lathe and
a set of cameos, while he offered her a snuff-box of
his own making, which she held in her hand during
her coronation, showing it with pride to Rogerson as a
gift which, said she, " puts me in mind of a highly
instructive moral." ^ These presents from the Russian
court were intensely galHng to Kosciuszko's feelings.
He refused as many as he could. The rest that he
accepted under compulsion he got rid of as soon as
possible. His return present to the Tsaritsa was an
act of courtesy, characteristic of Kosciuszko's chivalry
to women ; but he received with a marked coldness
the advances of the Tsar, showered upon him in the
moment's caprice, as was the manner of Paul I.*
On the 19th of December, 1796, he turned his back
upon Russia for ever and, accompanied by Niem-
cewicz, departed for Sweden.

. I T. Korzon, KoUiuszko. » Ibid.

CHAPTER IX

EXILE

The great and romantic chapter of Kosciuszko's
history is now closed. Twenty more years of Hfe
remained to him. Those years were passed in exile.
He never again saw his country.

The third partition of Poland was carried out by
Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1795, while the man
who had offered his life and liberty to avert it lay
in a Russian prison. Not even the span of Poland's
soil which Kosciuszko and his soldiers had watered
with their blood was left to her. To that extinction f
of an independent state, lying between Russia and
the Central Powers, barring the progress of Prussia
to the Baltic and the East, the most far-seeing
politicians ascribe the world-war that has been so
recently devastating the world.

It was therefore in bitter grief of heart that :?^

Kosciuszko set out for Swedem BesTdes j^iemcewicz, ^^

he had with him a young Polish officer, named
Libiszewski, who had eagerly offered himself to serve
Kosciuszko in any capacity till he reached the United
States. He carried Kosciuszko to carriage or couch,
and distracted his sadness by his admirable playing
on the horn and by his sweet singing. He died
— still young — of fever in Cuba.

173

174 KOSCIUSZKO

In the short northern day of four hours the party
made a long and tedious journey, impeded by the
bitter weather, through the pine forests of Finland.
The country was buried in snow, and so rough was
the travelUng that the three Poles had to pass a
night in the common hall of the inn, with pigs as
their sleeping companions. Kosciuszko's fame had
spread all over Europe. SweHeinigW"1ier&elf proud
that he was her guest, greeting him as " one of the
greatest men of our century." At Stockholm the
notables of the city crowded to pay their respects —
on foot, in order not to disturb the invahd with the
sound of carriages and horses. He was not, however,
very accessible. By temperament he shrank from
either publicity or fame ; and in his state of physical
and mental suffering he had no heart for the
honours showered upon him. He systematically
discouraged the forerunners of the modern inter-
viewers who were eager for " copy," and as far as
he could he kept to himself, his relaxations being
his own drawing, and the music of which he was
always passionately fond, and with which his Swedish
admirers were careful to provide him. A Swedish
writer, who was staying in the same hotel, desired
to visit him, but dared not do so, partly for fear of
intruding upon him, and partly because he owned
that he could not keep from tears at the sight of the
PoHsh patriot, so deeply had Kosciuszko's history
affected the pubHc of those days. Finally, he made
the plunge, and asked Kosciuszko's permission
for a 3^oung Swedish painter to take his portrait.
Kosciuszko courteously refused ; but an engraver
surreptitiously took notes of his features, and
reproduced them in a hkeness that travelled all

EXILE 175

over Sweden, depicting him, as our own Cosway
did afterwards, reclining, " his face," says the
Swedish description, " expressing the sufferings of
his soul over his country's fate."^

From Stockholm Kosciuszko passed on to Goteborg
to await a ship for England. Here too the inhabi-
tants vied with each other to do him honour, and
arranged amateur concerts for him in his rooms.
On the i6th of May the Poles embarked. After
three weeks' passage in a small merchant vessel, they
landed at Gravesend, and thence reached London.
" Kosciuszko, the hero of freedom, is here," announced
the Gentleman' s Magazine ; and indeed the Enghsh
papers were full of him. He stayed in Leicester
Square. The whole of London made haste to
visit him. The leading politicians, including Fox,
men of letters, among whom we find Sheridan, the
beauties of the day and the rulers of fashion, all
ahke thronged his rooms. To Walter Savage Landor,
then a mere youth, the sight of Kosciuszko awoke
the sympathy for Poland that he never lost, to which
English literature owes one of his Imaginary Con-
versations. More than half a century later he looked
back to the moment in which he spoke to Kosciuszko
as the happiest of his hfe. The Whig Club presented
Kosciuszko with a sword of honour. The beautiful
Duchess of Devonshire pressed upon him a costly
ring, which went the way of most of the gifts that
Kosciuszko received : he gave them away to friends.
All such tokens of admiration had never counted
for anything in Kosciuszko's life, and now they were
the merest baubles to a man who had seen his country
fall. In the portrait that, against his wish and without

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

176 KOSCIUSZKO

his knowledge, Cosway painted, said by Niemcewicz to
resemble him as none other, we see him, lying with
bandaged head in an attitude of deep and sorrowful
musing. The face, the whole attitude, are those of
one absorbed by an overmastering grief that filled
his soul to the exclusion of all else. The fine portrait
has found its way to Kosciuszko's native land, and
is now in Warsaw. The EngUsh doctor recommended
by Rogerson attended Ko^ciuszko assiduously, and
the Russian ambassador's kindness was so unfailing
that Kosciuszko, sending him his farewells as he
left England, wrote : "If ever I recover part of my
health it will be sweet to me to remember that it is
to your attentions, to the interest that you took in
me, that I shall owe it."i

Bristol was at that time the Enghsh port of saiUngs
for America. It was there that after a fortnight's
stay in London Kosciuszko betook himself, passing a
night in Bath on the way. He found in Bristol old
friends of his American days. He was the guest of
one of them, now the United States consul, as long
as he stayed in the town. A guard of honour received
him, long processions of the townsfolk flocked to
catch a ghmpse of him, a mihtary band played
every evening before the consulate, and the city
gave him a handsome silver service. An Enghshman
who visited him in Bristol records the impression
that Kosciuszko made on all who saw him, of one
whose whole being breathed devotion to his country.
* The same witness speaks of a soul unbroken by
misfortune, by wounds, poverty, and exile ; of an
eagle glance, of talk full of wit and wisdom.

The course down the Avon to the point where

' T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

EXILE 177

Kosciuszko's ship lay at anchor was a triumphal
progress. He was accompanied by English officers
in full dress, by the American consul and a host
of well-wishers. All heads were bared as he was
carried on board. The whole length of the river
handkerchiefs were waved from the banks. Fare-
wells resounded from every rock and promontory,
where spectators had crowded to see the last of the
Polish hero. Boats shot out from the private
dwellings on the waterside, laden with flowers and
fruits for the departing guest. Not a few men and
women boarded the ship and accompanied Kosciuszko
for some distance before they could bring themselves
to part with him.

For nearly two months Kosciuszko and his Polish
companions tossed on the Atlantic, running on one
occasion a near chance of shipwreck. Philadelphia
was their destination. Once in America, Kosciuszko
trod soil familiar and dear to him. " I look upon
America," he said, replying in FreficE^ to the
3eputation of Philadelphia's citizens who came on
board to welcome him, " as my second country, and
I feel myself too happy when I return to her." The
cannon from the fort and a storm of cheering greeted
him as he landed, and amidst cries of " Long live
Kosciuszko ! " the citizens drew his carriage to his
lodging.

Washington had just ceased to be President.
His successor, Adams, wrote congratulating Kos-
ciuszko on his arrival, " after the glorious efforts
you have made on a greater theatre. "^ Washington
wrote also : " Having just been informed of your
safe arrival in America, I was on the point of writing

I op. cit.
12

178 KOSCIUSZKO

to you a congratulatory letter on the occasion, wel-
coming you to the land whose liberties you have
been so instrumental in establishing, when I received
your favour of the 23rd. [A letter of Kosciuszko's
with a packet he had been requested to convey to
Washington.] ... I beg you to be assured that
no one has a higher respect and veneration for your
character than I have ; and no one more sincerely
wished, during your arduous struggle in the cause
of liberty and your country, that it might be crowned
with success. But the ways of Providence are
inscrutable, and mortals must submit. I pray you
to believe that at all times and under any circum-
stances it would make me happy to see you at my
last retreat, from which I never expect to be more
than twenty miles again. "'

The story of the meeting between Washington and
Ko^ciuszko, of Kosciuszko's words, " Father, do you
recognize your son ? " is a myth. They met neither
in Philadelphia nor elsewhere. The above letter is
the last indication of any intercourse between them.
Washington at this period was regarded with no
favour by the democracy. Kosciuszko's sympathies
were with the latter and with Jefferson, and he never
accepted the invitation to Washington's home in
Mount Vernon.

Yellow fever breaking out in Philadelphia,
Ko^ciuszko went for a time elsewhere : first~to New
York, to the beautiful house of his old friend and.
commander, Gates, later to New Brunswick, where
he stayed with another friend of the past. General
White, in a family circle that attracted his warm
regard. He was still confined to his sofa, and amused

» Writings oj George Washington, ed. Jared Sparks.

EXILE 179

himself by his favourite pastime of drawing and
painting, tended by the ladies of the house with a
solicitude which drew from him after he had gone
back to Philadelphia a charming " hospitable roof "
letter. I have been unable to see the original English
in which Kosciuszko wrote this letter, which is
given in a privately printed American memoir. I am
therefore obliged to translate it from the Polish
version, which is in its turn a translation into Polish
from Kosciuszko's English. We therefore lose the
flavour of Kosciuszko's not wholly correct manipu-
lation of our language : —

" Madam,

" I cannot rest till I obtain your forgiveness in
all its fulness for the trouble I gave you during my
stay in your house. . . . Perhaps I was the cause of
depriving you of amusements more suited to your
liking and pleasure, than busying yourself with me.
You never went out to pay visits. You were kind
enough to ask me daily what I liked, what I did not
like : all my desires were carried out ; all my wishes
were anticipated, to gratify me and to make my
stay agreeable. Let me receive an answer from you,
forgiving me, I beg Eliza [her daughter] to inter-
cede for me. I owe you too great a debt to be able
to express it in words adequate to my obligation and
my gratitude. Let this suffice, that I shall never
forget it, and that its memory will never be extin-
guished for even one moment in my heart." ^

He gave these ladies some of the splendid presents
he had received from the Russian Tsar : magnificent

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

180 KOSCIUSZKO

furs, a necklace of Siberian corals, and to White
himself the Duchess of Devonshire's ring. His
memory went down through the family, and Mrs.
White's grandson often heard his grandmother tell
of her Polish guest, and how she held no other man his
equal — with the patriotic exception of Washington !
White was a valuable auxiliary to Kosciuszko in a
somewhat intricate piece of business. To live on the
gift of money which Paul I had given him was an
odious position that Kosciuszko would not tolerate.
It was his intention to return it, and to claim from
Congress the arrears of the stipend owing to him
from 1788, and that through some mischance had
never reached him. W^ith White's assistance a
portion of the American sum was handed over to
him; but the return of the Tsar's present was not
so easy. Niemcewicz pointed out that such a pro-
ceeding would infallibly rouse the revenge of the
Tsar upon the Poles in his dominions. This decision
was against Ko^ciuszko's personal feeling on the
matter. He bided his time, and, as we shall see,
at a more propitious moment took his own counsel.
A bevy of visitors and admirers again surrounded
Kosciuszko in Philadelphia. Among them were the
future Louis Philippe, with the Princes de Montpensier
and Beaujolais. They called themselves citizens
of France, and sported the tricolour. They often
spent the evening with Kosciuszko, and on their
farewell visit Kosciuszko gave the younger prince
a pair of fur boots. But the man with whom
Kosciuszko was on the closest and warmest terms of
intimacy was Thomas Jefferson. The pastel portrait
that Kosciuszko painted of this dear friend is pre-
served among Poland's national relics. " He," wrote

EXILE 181

Jefferson to Gates, " is the purest son of liberty
among you all that I have ever known, the kind
of ' liberty which extends to all, not only to the
rich."i To Jefferson Kosciuszko confided the testa-
ment of his American property, which he had been
granted from Congress on the close of the War of
Independence, and which lay in Ohio on the site of
the present city of Columbus ; to Jefferson, again,
was entrusted the conduct of Kosciuszko's secret
departure from the States in 1798.

Some time in the March of that year a packet of
letters from Europe was handed to Kosciuszko.
His emotion on reading the contents was so strong
that, despite his crippled condition, he sprang from
his couch and staggered without a helping hand to
the middle of the room. " I must return at once
to Europe," he said to General White, with no
further explanation. Jefferson procured him a pass-
port to France under a false name, and then with
only Jefferson's knowledge, with no word either to
Niemcewicz or to his servant, for both of whom he
left a roll of money in a drawer in his cupboard, he
sailed for France. Before he embarked he wrote out
the will that he sent to Jefferson in which, more than
half a century before the war of North and South,
the Polish patriot pleaded for th e emanc ipation of
th£-Jie^ra§lay es . " ■"""^

" I, Thaddeus Kosciuszko " — the text is the ' ^"^
original English — " being just in my departure from
America, do hereby declare and direct that should
I make no other testamentary disposition of my
property in the United States thereby authorize my

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

,')

182 KOSCIUSZKO

' friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof
in purchasing jie^roes from among his own as any
others and giving them liberty in my name7in~giving
them an education in trades or otherwise, and in
haying them instructed for their new condition in
the duties 'oT~mofality which may make them good
neighbours, good fathers or mothers, husbands or
wives, and in their duties as citizens, teaching them
to be defenders of their liberty and country and of
the good order of society and in whatsoever may make
them happy and useful, and I make the said Thomas

, Jefferson my executor of this.

- " T. KosciuszKO.

" 5th day of May, 1798."

There seems to have been some difficulty in the
way of putting the bequest into effect, perhaps,
suggests Korzon, on account of Jefferson's advanced
years by the time that the testator was dead. It
was never carried out ; but in 1826 the legacy went to
found the coloured school at Newark, theTSrst edu-
cational institute for negroes to be opened in the
United States, and which bore Kosciuszko's name.

The secret of his movements is easily deciphered
in a man of Kosciuszko's stamp. It was the call of
his country that drew him back to Europe.

For we have reached that period of Polish history
which belongs to the Polish legions : the moment
of brilliance and of glo"ry whe'ff; led by the Polish
flags, Polish soldiers in the armies of Napoleon shed
their blood on every battlefield of Europe. In the
hope of regaining from Napoleon the freedom of their
country, the former soldiers of the Republic, no less
than the rising young Polish manhood, panting with

EXILE 183

passionate g^Ltriotism and with thejvvarlike instinct
' of~their"^ace, enrolfe^ 'themselves nr~the French
SLttnyT"^' Poland has not perished while we live,"
was the song, the March of Domhrowski, with which
they went to battle, and which to this da3^ forbidden
though it has been by their oppressors, we may hear
Poles sing at national gatherings. The leader of the
legions was the gallant Dombrowski. " Fellow-
citizens ! Poles ! " cried he" in his manifesto to his
nation in language strangely prophetic of the hour
that is scarcely past, when we have seen a PoHsh
army in Polish uniform fighting for liberty by the
side of the AlHes in the European War : " Hope is
rising ! France is conquering. The battahons are
forming. Comrades, join us ! Fhng away the
weapons which you have been compelled to bear.
Let us fight for the common cause of all the nations,
for freedom."^

In these early days Js^apoleon's betrayal of Poland C
was a tale still untold ; but to the end the Poles ;■
fought by his side with a hope in him that only .,
died with his fall, with a love and loyalty to his |^^
person that survived it.

Such was the news that travelled across the
Atlantic to Kosciuszko with dispatches that informed
him that his two nephews, sons of his sister Anna,
who had borne arms in the Rising, had been sent in
the name of Kosciuszko by their mother to Bonaparte
with the prayer that they might serve in his ranks.
By the end of June , 1798, Kosciuszko was in France,
in Bayonne. ~~

The accustomed acclamations greeted him there.
Some fit e-champetre was arranged at which Kosciuszko,

« T. Korzon, Kosciuszko

184 KOSCIUSZKO

the guest of honour, watched peasants laying their
ploughs at the feet of soldiers, in exchange for the
weapons of war. " It would have been thus in
Poland," he was heard to murmur to himself, " if
fate had not betrayed us."

In Paris he heard sympathy with himself and the
Polish cause expressed on all siHesT^" PubTIc~toasts to
the defender of the nation who was pouring her
blood like water in the cause of France were the
order of the hour. Ko^ciuszko was moved to tears
as he listened to the utterance of these good wishes for
his country's liberation. His first task was to confer
with the various foreign ambassadors and with
Dombrowski's adjutant, Dombrowski being in Italy.
He then definitely broke the bond between himself
and P aul L He~reIurne3l~fEgjmoney i^ce^^ from
the Tsar" with the following letter : —

" I am profiting by the first moment of liberty which
I am enjoying under the fostering laws of the greatest
and noblest of nations to send you back a gift, to
the acceptance of which I was forced by the mani-
festations of your benevolence and the merciless
proceedings of your ministers. If I agreed to accept
it, let Your Majesty ascribe this only to the uncon-
querable strength of the attachment which I bear to
my compatriots, the companions of my misfortunes,
as well as to m}^ hopes of still serving my country.
It seemed to me that my unhappy condition moved
your heart, but your ministers and their satellites
did not proceed with me according to your wishes.
Therefore, since they have dared to ascribe to my
free resolution an act to which they forced me, I will
disclose their violence and perfidy before you and
before all men who know the worth of honour, and

EXILE 185

may they only be answerable before you, Sire, for
the proclamation of their unworthy conduct. "^

At the same time that Kosciuszko forwarded this
letter to the Tsar he pubHshed it in two French
papers. The Tsar^'s reply was to return the sum
through the Russian ambassador in Vienna, with
the remark that he would " accept nothing from
tjaitors." It lay untouched in an English bank
till Kosciuszko's death.

Even before the repudiation of Kosciuszko's oath
reached Petersburg the fact of his arrival in France
had roused the wrath of Paul's envoy in Berlin,
who deliberated with the Prussian ministers how to
impede " the criminal intentions of the chief per-
petrator and instigator ^f the jrevolution in'Poland."
Kosciuszko's instant arrest was decreed, should he
ever be seen within the boundaries of Russia's
domination, and any one who entered into relations
with him there was branded as a traitor. Austria
and Prussia followed suit. Thus was Kosciuszko's
return to his own country barred before him.

Closely watched by Russian and Prussian spies,
who communicated, often erroneously, to their
respective governments the movements of " that
adventurer," as one of them styles him, Kosciuszko
had his headquarters in Paris. He was there when
Kniaziewlcz, fresh from the triumphs of the legions
in Italy, brought him, in the name of Poland,
Sobieski's sword. It had been preserved at Loreto,
whither the deliverer of Vienna had sent it more
than a century ago, after his triumph over the Turks.
The newly founded Republic of Rome presented it to
the officers of the Polish legions in 1798, who destined

» T. Korzon, Koiciuseko.

186 KOgCIUSZKO

it for Kosciuszko. " God grant," said Ko^ciuszko,
in his letter of acknowledgment to his fellow-Poles,

r " that we may lay down our swords together with
the sword of Sobieski in the temple of peace, having
won freedom and universal happiness for our com-

' patriots. "'

For a while Kosciuszko, continuously corresponding
with the French government, acted more or less as
the head of the legions. But wKen in October,
ifgg;' ihe government officially offered him the
leadership of the legions, he refused, for the reason
that he saw no sign that France was prepared to
recognize their distinct entity as a PoHsh national
army, and because he suspected Bonaparte would
use them merely as French regiments — a " corps of
mercenaries," as the Pohsh patriot bitterly exclaims
— for his own ends. He had written — September,
1799 — to the Directory, eloquently reminding France
that the Pohsh legions were founded to fight for the
independence of Poland, and that in the hope of
freedom the Poles had gladly fought " enemies who
were, besides their own, the enemies of freedom,"
but that their dearest hopes had already been deceived.
" These considerations impel me to beg you to show
us some ray of hope regarding the restoration of
independence to our country. "^ He required guar-
antees from Bonaparte, and these he never received.
Young Bonaparte and the Pole met for the first
time on the former's return from his brilliant
Egyptian campaign, when he called on Kosciuszko,
Kniaziewicz being also in the room. The interview
was brief and courteous. " I greatly wished," said
Napoleon, " to make the acquaintance of the hero of

» Letters of Kosciuszko. / * T. Korzon, Koiciuszko.

EXILE 187

the North." " And I," rephed Kosciuszko, " am
happy to see the conqueror of Europe and the hero
of the East." At a subsequent official banquet at
which Kosciuszko was present, some instinct warned
him of the course Napoleon's ambition was to take.
"Be on your guard against that young man," he
said on that occasion to certain members of the
French government ; and a few days later Napoleon
proclaimed himself First Consul. From that time
Kosciuszko began to withdraw from relations with
French officialdom, and to concern himself only
with the private matters of the Polish legions, not
with their public affairs. Lebrun reproached him for
showing his face no more among the high officers
of state. " You are now all so grand," replied the
son of the simple, far-distant Lithuanian home,
" that I in my modest garb am not worthy to go
among you." In 1801 came the Treaty of Luneville
with Napoleon's bitter deception of Poland's hopes.
Rage and despair filled the Polish legions. Numbers
of their soldiers tendered their resignations. Others
remained in the French army, and were sent by
Napoleon, to rid himself of them, said his enemies,
oil the disastrous expedition to San Domingo. Done
to death by yellow fever, by the arms of the natives
and the horrible onslaughts of the negroes' savage
dogs, four hundred alone survived to return.

HencefortlT Kosciuszko would have nothing further
to say to Bonaparte. Before a large audience at a
gathering in the house of Lebrun the latter called
out to Kosciuszko : " Do you know. General, that
the First Consul has been speaking about you ? "
" I never speak about him," Kosciuszko answered
curtly, and he visited Lebrun no more. The anguish

188 KOSCIUSZKO

of this fresh wro ng to his nation wen.t f ar to break
himT He again suffered intensely from the wound
in his head, and old age seemed suddenly to come
upon him. Many of the Polish soldiers who had
left the legions were homeless and penniless. These
Kosciuszko took pains to recommend to his old
friend Jefferson, now President of the United States.
"God bless you" — so Jefferson ends his reply — "and
preserve you still for a season of usefulness to your
country." I

Kosciuszko's intercourse with his American friends
did not slacken. At the request of one of them he
wrote a t reatise in French on artiller y that, trans-
lated in the United States into English, became a
textbook at West Point.

About this time Kosciuszko came across a Ssiss
family whose name will ever sound gratefully to the
Polish ear as the friends under whose roof he found
the domestic hearth that gladdened his declining
years. The Republican sympathies of the Zeltjiej:
brothers, one of whom was the diplomatic repre-
sentative of Switzerland in France, first attracted
Kosciuszko to them. Their relations soon grew
intimate ; and Kosciuszko's first visit in their house,
his sojourn with them in the country at Berville,
near Fontainebleau, that reminded him of the Poland
he had lost for ever, were the beginning of a common
household that only death severed.

Napoleon became emperor. He crushed Prussia at
Jena, from Berlin summoned the Poles in " Prussian "
Poland to rise, and sent his minister, Fouche, to
Kosciuszko, as the leader whose name every Pole

I Memoirs, Correspondence and Miscellanies of Thomas Jefferson,
ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph. Charlottesville, 1829.

EXILE 189

would follow, to engage him to place himself at their
head. Kosciuszko received these proposals with the
caution of a long and bitter experience. Would
Napoleon, he asked, openly state what he intended
to do for Poland ? Fouche put him off with vague
promises of the nature that the Poles had already
heard, and of which the Treaty of Luneville had
taught them the worth, coupled with threats of
Napoleon's personal vengeance on Kosciuszko if he
opposed the Emperor's desire. " The Emperor,"
answered Kosciuszko, " can dispose of me according
to his will, but I doubt if in that case my nation
would render him any service. But in the eyent
of mutual, reciprocal services my nation,' as well as I,
will be ready to serve him. May Providence forbid,"
he added solemnly, " that your powerful and august
monarch shall have cause to regret that he despised
our goodwill."^

But the tide of Napoleonic worship ran too high
not to carry all before it. Kosciuszko's was the one
dissentient voice. Before the interview with Fouche
had taken place, Wybicki and Dombrowski, unable
to conceive that Kosciuszko would take a different
line, had given their swords to the Emperor. Jozef
Poniatowski did likewise. In November, 1808,
Napoleon entered Poznan (Posen). In the same
month the French armies were in Warsaw, and the
Poles, in raptures of rejoidng, were haihng Napoleon
as~the liberator of their nation. Fouche, already
cognizant of Kosciuszko's attitude, issued a bogus
manifesto, purporting to be from Kosciuszko, sum-
moning his countrymen to Napoleon's flag. But
Kosciuszko himself only consented to repair to

I T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

190 KOSCITJSZKO

Warsaw, and throw his weight into the balance for
Napoleon, if the Emperor would sign in writing and
( publicly proclaim his promise to restore Poland under

the following three conditions : —

(i) That the form of Poland's government should

be that of the English constitution ;

(2) That the peasants should be liberated and
possess their own land ; and

(3) That the old boundaries of Poland should be
reinstated.

He wrote to this effect to Fouche, and privately
told a Polish friend that if the Emperor consented
to these conditions he would fall at his feet and
swear to the gratitude of the whole nation. ^ The
reply given by Napoleon to Fouche was that he
^ attached " no importance to Kosciuszko. His con-
* duct proves' thaTftg" IS only a fool." 2

"Active service for Poland was thus closed to
Kosciuszko. Anxious to leave a Napoleon-ridden
France, he requested permission to retire to Switzer-
land. It was refused, and he had nothing for it
but to remain in his French country retreat, under
police supervision. He stayed there for the five
years tEaf"Napoleon's conquests shook the world",
"condemning with his whole soul the spread of an
empire on ruin and bloodshed, occupying himself
with his favourite hobbies of gardening and handi-
crafts, working at his turning and making wooden
clogs. The family with whom he lived was as his
own. His name was given to the three children who
were born since his residence under its roof : the
only one of them who survived infancy — Taddea

' General Paszkowski, History of Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Cracow,
1872 (Polish), 2 Napoleon I, Coyrespondance. Paris, 1863.

EXILE 191

Emilia — became the beloved child of Kosciuszko's old
age. The eldest son learnt from him love for Poland
and fought in the Pohsh Rising of 1830.

The story of the Russian campaign of 1812, with
the passion of hope that it evoked in the Polish
nation and its extinction in the steppes of Russia,
need not be repeated here. In March, 1814, the
allied armies and the monarchs of Russia and Prussia
entered Paris.

Alexander I, the youth who had visited Kosciuszko
in prison, was now Tsar of Russia. In the days when
Alexander was a neglected heir at the court of
Catherine II young Adam Czartoryski was a hostage
at the same court, concealing his yearning for his
country and loathing for his surroundings under the
icy reserve that was his only defence. One day
Alexander drew the young prince aside in the palace
gardens, told him that he had long observed him
with sympathy and esteem, and that it was his
intention when he succeeded to the throne to restore
Poland. This was the beginning of that strange
friendship which led to a Pole directing the foreign
policy of Russia in the years preceding the Congress
of Vienna, and ended in Alexander's betrayal of
Czartoryski's nation.

But in the spring of 18 14 Alexander was still of
liberal and generous tendencies. That Kosciuszko
must have left a strong impression on his memory
is evident ; for on entering Paris he performed the
graceful act of charging the PoHsh officers about him
with courteous messages for the patriot of Poland.
Kosciuszko never lost an opportunity of furthering
the cause to which his life was devoted. He at
once wrote to the Tsar, venturing, so he said, from

192 KOSCIUSZKO

his " remote corner " of the world to lay three
requests before him. The first was that Alexander
s'hould proclaim a general amnesty for t he Poles in
his dominions and that the Polish peasants, dispersed
in foreign countries, should be considered not serfs,
but free men, on their return to Poland ; the second,
that Alexander should proclaim himself king of a
free Poland, to be ruled by a constitution on the
pattern of England's, and that sc hools f^ r.^he
peasantry should be opened at the cost of the state
as the certain means of ensuring to them their liberty.
" If," he added, " my requests are granted, I will
come in person, although sick, to cast myself at
the feet of Your Imperial Majesty to thank you
and to render you homage as to my sovereign. If
my feeble talents can still be good for anything,
I will immediately set out to rejoin my fellow-
citizens so as to serve my countfy and my
sovereign honourably and faithfully. "^

He then asks a private favour — not for himself :
that Zeltner, who had a large family to support and
whom Kosciuszko was too poor to help, might be
given some post in the new French government,
or in Poland.

He received no answer ; and so came into Paris
and obtained an audience. Alexander greeted him
as an honoured friend, and bade him be assured of
his good intentions towards Poland. A stream of
visits and receptions then set in, at which Kosciuszko
was the recipient of public marks of esteem, not
only from the Tsar, but from his brother, the
Grand Duke Constantine, whose ill-omened name

I d'Angeberg, Rectieil des Traitis, Conventions ei Actes Diplo-
tnatiques concernant la Pologne, 1762- 1862. Paris, 1862.

EXILE 193

was later to win for itself the execration of the Polish
nation. But Kosciuszko was too far-sighted to
content himself with promises. He asked for a
written^ statement of what his country fnight expect
from the TsarT' Alexander answered, on the 3rd of
May, 1814 :

" Your dearest wishes will be accomplished. With
the aid of the Almighty I hope to bring about the
resurrection of the valiant and admirable nation
to which you belong. I have taken upon myself
this solemn obligation. . . , Only pohtical circum-
stances have placed obstacles against the execution
of my intentions. Those obstacles no longer exist,
. . . Yet a Uttle more time and prudence, and the
Poles shall regain their country, their name, and
I shall have the pleasure of convincing them that,
forgetting the past, the man whom they held for
their enemy is the man who shall fulfil their
desires." i

Further personal interviews followed between
Kosciuszko and the Tsar. Later, Kosciuszko called
upon these as his witness when, at the Congress of
y Vienna, Alexander went back upon his given word.
The question of Poland was now to come up in the
European Congress, as one of the most pressing
problems of the stabiUty of Europe. Alexander I's
intention was to found a kingdom of Poland of which
he should be crowned king. Adam Czartoryski,
Alexander's Minister for Foreign Affairs, requested
Kosciuszko to repair to Vienna and dehberate with
himself and the Tsar upon the matter. Napoleon
was back from Elba and marching on Paris, and to
ensure the possibihty of prosecuting a journey under

' op. cit.
13

194 KOSCIUSZKO

the complications of the hour Kosciuszko was advised
to have his passport made out under some name
not his own. He chose that of " Pole."

With considerable difficulty, constantly turned
back by police authorities, forbidden entrance by
the Bavarian frontier, sent about from pillar to
post, the white-haired, frail old soldier at last reached
the Tsar's headquarters at Braunau. The Tsar and
he conferred for a quarter of an hour. Kosciuszko
derived small satisfaction from the interview, and
immediately proceeded to visit Czartoryski in Vienna.
Czartoryski had nothing good to tell. The wrangling
over the Pohsh question at the Congress, the mutual
suspicions and jealousies of every power represented,
nearly brought about another war. In May, 1815,
Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed an agreement for
a renewed division of Poland between them. An
autonomous Kingdom of Poland was, it is true, to
be formed, with the Tsar as king, but only out of a
small part of Poland. As regards the remaining
Polish provinces that remained under Russia's rule,
they were severed from the Kingdom and incorporated
with Russia,

Kosciuszko heard these things. Under the shock
of his apprehensions he wrote to the Tsar, plead-
ing in the strongest language at his command,
that penetrates through the diplomatic wording he
was compelled to use, against the separation of
lands that were Polish from the mother country,
the mutilated Kingdom of Poland.

After expressing his gratitude for what the Tsar
was prepared to do in the foundation of the new
Kingdom of Poland, he proceeds :

" One only anxiety troubles my soul and my joy.

EXILE 195

Sire, I was born a Lithuanian, and I have only a
few years to hve. Nevertheless, the veil of the
future still covers the destiny of my native land and
of so many other provinces of my country, I do
not forget the magnanimous promises that Your
Majesty has deigned to make me by word of mouth
in this matter, as well as to several of my compatriots
- . . but my soul, intimidated by such long mis-
fortunes, needs to be reassured again." He is
prepared faithfully to serve Alexander : let the writer
descend to the tomb in " the consohng certainty
that all your Pohsh subjects will be called to bless
your benefits."!

In vain he waited for an answer. Then, openly,
as to the Tsar he could not write, he wrote to
Czartoryski :

"My Dear Prince,

" You are certainly convinced that to serve
my country efficaciously is my chief object. The
refusal of the Tsar to answer my last letter
removes from me the possibihty of being of
service to her. I have consecrated my hfe to the
greater part of the nation, when to the whole it was
not possible, but not to that small part to which is
given the pompous name of the Kingdom of Poland
We should give grateful thanks to the Tsar for the
resuscitatT6n~oirfhe~1ost "PoTisTrnajner but" a^~n'ame ^

alone does not constitute a nation. ... I see no
gioarahtee' of "the" "promise of the Tsar made to me
and many others of the restoration of our country
from the Dnieper to the Dzwiha, the old boundaries

' d'Angeberg, Recueil des Traites, Conventions et Actes Dipio-
matiques concernant la Pologne.

196 KOSCIUSZKO

of the Kingdom of Poland, except only in our desires."
[That restoration alone, says Kosciuszko, can establish
sound and friendly relations between Poland and
Russia. If a free and distinct constitution of such a
kingdom be conferred upon Poland, the Poles might
enjoy happiness.] " But as things go now, and
from the very beginning, Russians hold together with
ours the first places in the government. That
certainly cannot inspire Poles with any great con-
fidence. On the contrary, with dread each of us
will form the conclusion that the Polish name will
in time be held in contempt, and that the Russians
will treat us as their conquered subjects, for such a
scanty handful of a population will never be able
to defend itself against the intrigues, the prepon-
derance and the violence of the Russians. And
can we keep silence on those brothers of ours remain-
ing under the Russian government ? " [Lithuania
and Ruthenia.] " Our hearts shudder and suffer that
they are not united to the others." ^

Again Kosciuszko's unerring single-mindedness and
high patriotism had pierced through all illusions
and foretold the truth. His words were literally
verified. Fifteen years later Europe saw his nation
driven into an armed conflict for the rights that had
been promised to her by Alexander, that were
trampled upon by him and his successor, and the
man, to whom the above warning was addressed,
outlawed by the Russian Government for the part
he played in the insurrection.

Kosciuszko also wrote to Lord Grey to the same
effect. Grey replied :

» T. Korzon, Kosciuszko.

EXILE 197

" To that first violation of the sacred principles of
general liberty which was effected in the partition of
1772, and those that followed in 1793 and 1795, we
must refer all the dangers to which the whole of
Europe has been subsequently exposed. . . . No real
safeguard can exist against the return of these dangers,
if Poland remains excluded from the benefits of a
general deliverance, which, to be perfect, must be
guaranteed by the solemn recognition of her rights
and independence. If the powers who sought to
profit by injustice and who, in the sequence, have
suffered so much because of it, could learn the true
lesson of experience, they would see that their mutual
safetj^ and tranquiUty would be best preserved by
reestablishing among them, as a genuinely inde-
pendent state, the country that a false policy has
so cruelly oppressed." (Portman Square, London,
July I, 1814.)!

This was written a hundred years ago, and the
Nemesis of history is still with us. The Congress of
Vienna was a fresh partition of Poland.

If, so Kosciuszko wrote to Alexander, he could
have returned " as a Pole to his country," hejwould
have done so. As it was, he refused to return to
what he knew was treachery and deception. With
the aspect of a man .who had suffered shipwreck, he
left Vienna, and retired for good and all from public

ufs:

~"'He was now sixty-nine, with his health, that
he had never regained since he was wounded at
Maciejowice, broken. All that he asked was to spend
his declining years in free Switzerland with a little
house and garden of his own. When it came to the

' d'Angeberg, Recueil des Traites.

198 KOSCIUSZKO

point he took up his abode with the devoted Zeltners
in Soleure, and his last days passed in peace among
them. He prepared his morning coffee himself in
his room, upon the walls of which hung a picture
painted in sepia after his own indications of that
glorious memory of his life — the battle of Raclawice.
He dined at the family table, and enjoyed his evening
rubber of whist with the Zeltners, the family doctor,
and a Swiss friend. Every hour was regularly
employed. In the mornings he always wrote :
what, we do not know, for he left orders to his
executors to destroy his papers, and unfortunately
was too well obeyed. In the afternoons he walked
or rode out, generally on errands of mercy. The
little girl of the house was his beloved and constant
companion ; and we have a pretty picture of the
veteran hero of Poland teaching this child history,
mathematics, and above all, drawing. His delight
was to give children's parties for her amusement,
at which he led the games and dances and told stories.
He was the most popular of playmates. His appear-
ance in the roads was thBsignaTfor an onslaught of
his child friends with gifts of flowers, while he never
failed to rifle his pockets of the sweets with v^hich
he had stuffed them for the purpose. He loved not
only children, but all young people. The young
men and girls of the neighbourhood looked upon
him as a father, and went freely to him for sympathy
and advice.

Kosciuszko's means were slender, and his tastes
remained always simple. An old blue suit of well-
patched clothes sufficed for him ; but he must needs
have a rose or violet in his buttonhole, with which
the ladies of Soleure took care to keep him supplied.

EXILE 199

The money he should have spent in furbishing up
his own person went in charity and in providing
EmiHa with articles of dress, for the family, chiefly
through the father's improvidence, was badly off.
He was known by the poor for many a mile around
as their angel visitant. Outside his doors gathered
daily an army of beggars, certain of their regular
dole. Kosciuszko's rides were slow, not only on
account of his wounded leg, but because his horse
stopped instinctively whenever a beggar was sighted,
in the consciousness that his master never passed one
by without giving alms. He was a famihar visitor
in the peasants' cottages. Here he would sit among
the homely folk, encouraging them to tell him the
tale of their troubles, pinching himself if only he
could succour their distress. He would explain to
his domestic circle long and unaccountable absences
in wild wintry weather by the excuse that he had
been visiting friends. The friends were peasants,
sick and burdened with family cares, to whom
the old man day after day carried through the
snow the money they required, as the stranger
benefactor who would not allow his name to be
told.

Into this quiet routine broke the advent of dis-
tinguished men and women of every nation, eager to
pay their "hoihage to a man whose life and character
had so deeply impressed Europe. An uncertain
tradition has it that Ludwika Lubomirska visited
him, and that in his old age the two former lovers
talked together once more. Correspondence from
known and unknown friends poured in upon him.
Among these was the Princess of Carignano, the
mother of Carlo Alberto, herself the daughter of a

200 KOSCIUSZKO

Polish mother, Franciszka Krasinska, through whom
the blood of Poland flows in the veins of the present
Royal House of Italy. Nor was England left out.
A book, now forgotten, but largely read in a past
generation, in which Kosciuszko's exploits figure,
Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw, was sent to
Kosciuszko by its author. Jane Porter had heard
her brother's description of the Polish hero, to whom
he had spoken when Kosciuszko was in London. She
had seen the Cosway portrait. In his letter of thanks
Kosciuszko told her jestingly that he was glad that
all her eulogies of him were " in a romance, because
no one will beUeve them." Either from him or from
a friend of his she received a gold ring or, as some
say, a medal, with a representation of himself engraved
upon it.

Through these last years Kosciuszko's heart ever
clung fondly to his own land and language. On the
French letters he received his hand, as he read, was
wont to trace Polish proverbs, Polish turns of phrase.
Tears were seen to rise to his eyes as, gazing at the
beautiful panorama from a favourite spot of his in
the Jura, a French friend recited Arnault's elegy
on the homeless and wandering leaf, torn from the
parent oak, in which the Pole read the story of his
own exile. Education of the lower classes, for which
he had already made so strong"a~sIahH!^ continued to
be one of the matters in which he most keenly inter-
ested himself. During his stay in Vienna he had
drawn up a memorandum on the subject for those
responsible for the department in the Kingdom of
Poland then forming. One of his last expeditions
before his death was to a great Swiss educational
establishment where Pestalozzi's system had been

EXILE 201

inaugurated, and where Kosciuszko spent two
days among the pupils, watching its working
with the idea of its appHcation to PoUsh require-
ments.

So his days went by till his quiet death. His
death was as simple as had been his life. He put
his worldly affairs in order, bequeathing the money
of Paul I that he had never touched and that he
would not affront Alexander I, with whom his
relations were always friendly, by returning, to a
Polish friend who had fought under him in the
Rising and to Emilia Zeltner, The remainder of all
that he had to give went to other members of the
Zeltner family and to the poor. He directed that
his body should be carried by the poor to the grave,
that his own sword should be laid in his coffin and
the sword of Sobieski given back to the Polish nation.
Then, with a last look of love bent upon the child
Emiha, who knelt at the foot of his bed, Tadeusz
Kosciuszko, the greatest and the most beloved of
Poland's heroes, gently breathed his last on the
evening of October 15, 1817. _

His body now rests in the Wawel in Cracow, where
lie Poland's kings and her most honoured dead ;
his heart in the Polish Museum in Rapperswil,
Switzerland, among the national treasures that have
been placed in a foreign land to preserve them against
spoliation by Poland's conquerors. To his memory
three years after his death his nation raised a monu-
ment, perhaps unique of its kind. Outside Cracow
towers the Kosciuszko, hill, fashioned by the hands
of Polish men, women, and children, all bringing
earth in shovel and barrow, to lay over dust, carried
thither with no little difficulty, from the battlefields

202 KOSCIUSZKO

where Kosciuszko had fought for Poland. That act
is typical. To this day the name of Tadeusz Kos-
ciuszko lives in the hearts of the Polish people, not
only as the object of their profound and passionate
love, but as the symbol of their dearest^national
aspirations. He has given his name to the greatest
poem in the Polish language that is read wherever
the Polish tongue has been carried by the exiled
sons of Poland. His pictures, his relics, are venerated
as with the devotion paid to a patron saint. Legend,
folk-song, national music have gathered about his
name: and after Warsaw had risen for her freedom
on the Novem^ber night of 1830 it was to the
strains of the Polonaise of Kosciuszko thaf the
Poles danced in a never-to-be-forgotten scene of
patriotic exultation.

A Prussian fiction has attributed to Kosciuszko as
he fell on the field of Maciejowice the phrase Finis
Polonies. In a letter to Count Segur, Kosciuszko
indignantly denied that he had uttered a sentiment
which is the last ever to be heard on Polish lips or
harboured in the heart of a Pole ; and with his
words, to which the Poles them.selves have borne
the most convincing testimony by the preservation
of their nationality unimpaired through tragedy
almost inconceivable, through nearly a hundred and
fifty years of unremitting persecution, I close this
book on the noblest of Polish patriots.

" When," so Kosciuszko writes to Segur, " the
Polish nation called me to defend the integrity, the
independence, the dignity, the glory and the liberty
of the country, she knew well that I was not the
last Pole, and that with my death on the battlefield
jor elsewhere Poland could not, must not end. All

EXILE 203

that the Poles have done since then in the glorious
Polish legions and all that they will still do in the
future to gain their country back, sufficiently proves
that albeit we, the devoted soldiers of that country,
are mortal, Poland is immortal. "^

' d'Angeberg, Recueil des Traites.

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Powstanie T. Kosciuszki z Pism Autentycznych Sekretnyclu

Poznad, 1846.
Raczj-nski, E. Obraz Polakdw i Polski w XVIII wieku. Poznan,

1841.
Rychlicki, F. Tadeusz Kosciuszko i Rozbidr Polski. Cracow, 1875.
Szujski, Jozef. Dzieje Polski. Lwow, 1866.
Tarnowski, St. Nasze Dzieje w XIX wieku. Cracow, 1901.
Tygodnik Illustrowany. Warsaw, 1881. Pamietnik J. Soroki; and

for Kosciuszko's letter to Karl Schmid.
Washington, George. Writings. Ed. by Jared Sparks. New

York, 1847.

204

INDEX

Adams, President of United
States, 177

Alexander, I, of Russia, visits
Kosciuszko in prison, 168,
191 ; friendship -with Czar-
toryski, 168, 191 ; relations
uith Poland, 168, 191-6 ;
enters Paris in 1814, 191 ;
Kosciuszko's efforts for Po-
land with, 191-5, 197 ; pro-
mise to Kosciuszko, 193; 201

.\ndre, 44

Arnault, 200

Arnold, 44

Augustus, III, king of Poland,

26, 27

Bar, Confederation of, 31, 39,

40, 130
Bartos, Wojtek, see dowacki
Beaujolais, de, 180
Brandy*, Tomasz, 106, 107
Branicki, X,, 71, 72, 79, 81, 83
Burgoyne, 38
Burke, Edmund, 71

Carignano, princess di, Maria,
199

Carlo Alberto, 199

Catherine, II, of Russia, rela-
tions with Stanislas Augustus,

27, 33, 77, 80 ; intrigues
in Poland, 31, 71, 72, 77, 81,
83. 87, 94; 92 ; 99; 130;
attitude to Prussia at siege
of Warsaw, 146 ; treats with
Prussia for third parti-
tion, 149 ; sends Suvorov to
Polcind. ib. ; relations with
Kosciuszko, 167 ; death, 168;
172; 191

Charles, XII, of Sweden, 30

Clinton, 41

Constantine, Grand Duke, 192,

193

Constitution of the Third of
May, 53, 59. 71, 72, 81, 89,
117, 128

CornwaUis, 46

Cosway, portrait of Kosciuszko,
175, 176, 200

Czartoryska, Princess, Kosciusz-
ko's letters to, 79-81, 84,
121 ; 87

Czartoryski, Prince Adam, re-
lations with Kosciuszko, 27,
50 ; relations with School of
Cadets, 27-29

Czartoryski, Prince Adam, meets
Kosciuszko in youth, 87;
hostage in Catherine II's
court, 87, 191 ; friendship
with Alexander I, 168, 191 ;
Russia's foreign minister of
affairs, 191. 193 ; interview
with Kosciuszko, 194 ; Kos-
ciuszko's letter to, 195, 196 ;
outlawed for share in Rising
of 1830, 196

Danton, 90

Denisov, 129

Devonshire, Duchess of, 175,
180

Dombrowski, leader of Polish
legions, 143, 183, 189 ; the
March of, 143, 183 ; at siege
of Warsaw, 143 ; successes in
Great Poland, 150 ; takes
Bydgoszcz, 154 ; manifesto
to Poles, 183 ; 184

Dzialynski, 157

205

206

KOgCIUSZKO

Estko, Stanislas, 56, 85, 183
Estkowa, Anna, 30 ; affection
between Kosciuszko and, 33,
56 ; 54 ; 55 >■ Kosciuszko's let-
ters to, 56, 57, 60, 61 ; Kos-
ciuszko's farewell letter to,
84. 85 ; 183

Fersen, Kosciuszko marches
against, 153 ; Kosciuszko's
captor, 159-162

Fiszer, 156, 158-165

Fouche, treats for Napoleon
with Kosciuszko, 1 88-1 go

Fox, 175

Franklin, Benjamin, 40, 50

Frederick William, II, of Prus-
sia, 99 ; at Szczekociny, 132,
133 ; 138 : at siege of
Warsaw, 141 ; summons
Stanislas Augustus to sur-
render, 145 ; treats with
Catherine II for the third
partition, 149

Gates, relations with Kosciuszko,
38, 39. 43. 44. 178 ; at
Saratoga, 38, 39 ; 41 ; defeat
Camden, 45 ; 181

George III, 92

Glowacki, Wojciech, 109

Greene, Mrs., 48

Greene, Nathaniel, relations with
Kosciuszko, 43-46 ; leads
war in Carolina; 45-9, on
Kosciuszko, 48, 49

Grey, Lord, Kosciuszko ad-
dresses him on restoration
of Poland, 196 ; his answer,
196, 197

Grzywa, Jan, 106, 107

Igelstrom, 92, 95, 112, 113

Jefferson, Thomas, 44 ; Kos-
ciuszko's friendship with,
178. 180, 181, 188 ; Kos-
ciuszko's portrait of, 180 ;
on Kosciuszko, 181 ; execu-
tor of Kosciuszko's legacy to
the negroes, 181, 182

Kachowski, 76, 78

Kamienski, 142, 143

Kapostas, 94, 128

Kilinski, takes part in Rising,
112, 140, 141, 143 ; on
Pohsh National Council, 128

Kniaziewicz, in Polish legions,
64, 185 ; in Pan Tadeusz,
70 ; at Dubienka, 76 ; 81 ;
at Maciejowice, 158 ; pris-
oner of war, 158-164 ; 185 ;
186

Kollontaj, Hugo, member of
Commission of Education,
53 ; collaboration in Rising,
53, 89, 92. 95, 121 ; as
political reformer, 54, 61 ;
friendship with Kosciuszko,

61, 153 ; on Kosciuszko, 89 ;
member of National Council,
127

Kopec, leads soldiers to Rising,
130 ; at Maciejowice, 157 ;
prisoner of war, 157-164

Korzon, T., 35, 37. 59, 69, 85,
86, 135, 166

Kosciuszko, Jozef, 30, 31, 33, 54,

55

Kosciuszko, Ludwik, position of,
24 ; character and house-
hold, 24, 25 ; 26 ; 32 ; 34

Kosciuszko, Tadeusz, type of
national champion, 23 ; char-
acter, 23, 26, 29, 30, 33,
34, 41, 42, 45, 47, 49, 51, 57,

62, 70, 80, 83, 93, 102, 105,
107, III, 115, 122-124, 127,

131. 134. 138. 147. 148, I74>
175. 196 ; birth, 23 ; early
life, 24-6 ; efforts for the
serfs, 25, 55, 85, 116, 117.
190, 192 ; patriotism, 26,
32, 33. 43. 50. 58. 70. 83,
84. 93. 115. 122, 123, 144,
167, 175, 176, 182, 188, 191,
196, 200 ; relations with
Adam Czartoryski, 27, 50 ;
life as cadet, 27-30 ; rela-
tions with Stanislas Augus-
tus, 27, 30-33, 35, 59, 60,
76, 79-81, 113, 119, 122 ;

INDEX

207

Kosci u szko — continued.

his appearance, 29, 144 ;
financial difficulties, 30-33,
54. 55 ; studies in France,

31. 32, 35 ; in American War
of Independence, 31, 32,
36-52, 57. 59. 82, 91, 132 ;
returns to Poland in 1774,

32, 33 ; affection for Anna
Estkowa. 33, 56 ; Ludwika
Sosnowska (Lubomirska) and,
33-35. 51. 59, 163, 199;
leaves Poland in 1775, 35 ;
in Paris, 35, 36 ; relations
with Washington, 37, 39-44,
49, 177, 178 ; relations wth
Gates, 38, 39, 43, 44, 178 ;
meeting with Pulaski, 39,
40 ; relations with Greene,
43-46 ; sympathy for ne-
groes, 45 ; Greene on, 48, 49 ;
American testimonies to, 49 ;
American honours for, 49,
50 ; friendship with Niem-
cewicz, 50, 51, 61, 105, 144,
160, 165, 170 ; leaves Am-
erica, 51 ; democratic sym-
pathies, 51, 58, 59, 90, 91,
128, 178 ; returns to Poland
from America, 53 ; life in
the country, 54-8 ; letters
to Anna Estkowa, 56, 57, 60,
61, 84, 85 ; friendship with
Zaleslds, 57 ; letter to Michal
Zaleski's wife, 57, 58 ; letters
to Michal Zaleski, 58, 72, 73,
82, 83 ; his ideas on peasant
army, 58, 91-4, 108, no,
116; command in Polish
army, 59-62, 73 ; friendship
with Ignacy Potocki and
Kollontaj, 61, 153 ; Orlow-
ski's letter to, 62 ; love for
Tekla Zurowska, 62-70 ; let-
ters to Tekla Zurowska, 63-7,
69 ; in Pan Tadeusz, 70 ;
part in Ukraine campaign,
74-6, 78 ; his MS. on Uk-
raine campaign, 75. 76,
78, 91, 92, 119; honours
after Dubienka, 76, 77 ;

Kosciuszko — continued.

resigns command, 79-81, 84 ;
letters to Princess Czar-
toryska, 79-81, 84, 121 ;
audience with King, 80, 81 ;
last days in Warsaw, 81, 82 ;
letter to Felix Potocki, 82 ;
bequeathal of estate, 84, 85 ;
goes into exile, 85, 86 ; in
Galicia, 87, 88 ; friendship
of Czartoryskis for, 87 ; in
Leipzig, 88, 89 ; Kollontaj
on, 89 ; in Paris during
Revolution, 89-92 ; relations
with Lebrun, 90, 187 ;
characteristics of his govern-
ment of Poland, 91, 114,
115, 121, 124 ; returns
to Leipzig, 92 ; chosen as
national leader, 92, 93 ;
preparations for Rising, 93,
^ 94 ; in Italy, 94 ; in Dresden,

95 ; enters Poland as Ub-
erator, 95 ; enters Cracow,

96 ; his Act of the Rising,
96-102, 127 ; opens Rising
in Cracow, 97, 98 ; made
dictator, 100 ; character of
his manifestos, 102, 123 ;
manifesto to the Polish and
Lithuanian armies, 103-5 ;
to the clergy, 105 ; to
women, 105, 106 ; receives
offering of boatmen, 106,
107; organizes Rising,
107; his victory at Rac-

lawice, 108, 109, 132, 198 ;
relations with peasant sol-
diers, 108, 109, 122, 144 ;
his report on Raclawice,
109 ; organizes Rising after
Raclawice, no; enthu-
siasm for him, no, 121-3,
144 ; manifesto to San-
domierz, in, 112 ; appeal to
Warsaw, 112 ; manifesto on
Rising of Warsaw, 113 ;
Provisional Council of Wilno
on, 113, 114; difficulties of
his task, 114, 115 ; letters to-
Mokronowski, 115, 122, 148 ;

^

208

KOSCIUSZKO

Kosciuszko — continued.

to prince Sapieha, 115, 116 ;
manifesto to Volhjmia, 116 ;
mandate to churches, 118 ;
conception of the war, 118,
130 ; manifesto regarding
Ruthenes, 118, IL9 ; to
Ruthenian clergy, 119; let-
ter to King, 120, 121 ;
relations with his officers,
122, 123 ; manifesto to
Lithuania, 124, 125 ; mani-
festo on his government--of
state, 126, 127 ; regularizes
civil government, 127, 128 ;
reception of Poniatowski,
127 ; against Denisov, 129 ;
description of his camp and
person, 130, 131 ; 131 ;
defeat at Szczekociny, 132—4;
Austria orders arrest of,
134 ; summons to peasant
war, 134, 135 ; his desperate
position, 135 ; letter to citi-
zens of Warsaw, 135, 136 ;
manifesto after Szczekociny,
136 ; march to Warsaw, 136,
138 ; manifesto on loss of
Cracow, 137 ; letter to War-
saw on street murders, 138-
140 ; tact in dealing with
men and affairs, 140 ; his
defence of Warsaw, 141-6 ;
conduct of affairs from War-
saw, 144, 145 ; attitude on
Rising in Great Poland, 145 ;
letter to Zakrzewski, 145,
146 ; letter of National
Council to, 146, 147 ; reply
to National Council, 147 ;
religious tolerance, 148 ; con-
duct to Jews, ib. ; and to
prisoners of war, 148, 149 ;
position after deliverance of
Warsaw, 149, 150 ; journey
to Lithuania, 150 ; mani-
festo to Lithuanian army,
150-152 ; his last manifesto,
152, 153 ; last night in
Warsaw, 153 ; ride from
Warsaw to Sierakowski's

Kosciuszko — continued.

camp, 153, 154 ; last march.
154. 155 .' attitude on Dom-
browski's victory, 154 ; on
eve of Maciejowice, 155,
156 ; at Maciejowice, 156-
158, 197. 202 ; wounded
and taken prisoner, 158 ;
prisoner in the Zamojski
manor, 159, 160 ; journey
to Russia, 160-165 ; message
and gift from National
Council to, i6i ; grief in
Warsaw for, 161 ; Warsaw
offers to exchange Russian
prisoners for, 161, 162 ;
Niemcewicz on indignity
shown to, 162 ; failure and
moral effect of his Rising,
163 ; imprisonment in Peters-
burg, 165-168, 170, 171,
173 ; subjected to inquisi-
tion, 166, 167 ; relations
with Catherine II, 167 ;
Rogerson on, 167 ; visited
by Paul I in prison and
freed, 168 ; visited by Alex-
ander I in prison, 168, igi ;
colloquy with Paul, 168-170 ;
subsequent interviews with
Tsar, 170 ; interview with
Niemcewicz, 170, 171 ; takes
oath of allegiance, 171 ;
farewell audience with Im-
perial family, 171, 172 ;
leaves Russia, 172 ; journey
through Finland, 173, 174 ;
in Sweden, 174, 175 ; Swe-
dish portrait of, 174, 175 ;
Cosway's portrait of, 175,
176, 200 ; leaves Sweden
for England, 175 ; hfe in
London, 175, 176 ; effect on
Savage Landor, 175 ; 'letter
to Russian ambassador, 1 76 ;
in Bath and Bristol, ib. ;
departure from Bristol, 176.
177 ; journey to United
States, 177 ; in Philadel-
phia, 177, 178 ; Adams'
letter to, 177 ; friendship

INDEX

209

JKosciuszko — continued.

with Jefferson, 178, 180,
181, 188 ; friendship with
White family, 178-180; let-
ter to Mrs. White, 179 ; re-
turns to Philadelphia, 179 ;
Paul I's gift of money to,
180, 184, 185, 201 ; financial
dealings with Congress, 180 ;
visited by Orleans princes,
180 ; his portrait of Jeffer-
son, ib. ; Jefferson on, 181 ;
returns to Europe, 1 81-183 ;
will for the negroes, 181,

182 ; nephews join legions,

183 ; honours paid him in
Bayonne, 183, 184 ; in Paris,
184, 185 ; repudiates oath
to Paul I, 184, 185 ; mea-
sures taken by partitioning
powers against, 185 ; pre-
sented with Sobieski's sword,

1S5, 186 ; relations with
legions, 186, 187 ; relations
■with Napoleon I, 186-190 ;
wthdraws from relations
with French government,
187 ; furthers interests of
disbanded legionaries, 188 ;
his textbook on artillery,
ib. ; friendship with Zelt-
ners, 188, 190-192, 198, 199,
201 ; his conditions for
Poland's restoration, 190,
192 ; life in France until
2Srapoleon's fall, 190, 191 ;
Emilia Zeltner and, 190, 191,
198, 199, 201 ; relations with
Alexander I, 191, 201 ; pleads
ior Poland with Alexander,
191-195, 197 ; promise of
Alexander to, 193 ; sent
for by Czartoryski, 193;
journey to Austria, 193,
194 ; interview ^\ith Czar-
toryski, 194 ; letter to Czar-
toryski, 195, 196 ; fulfilment
•of his predictions regarding
Poland, 196 ; writes to Grey,
ib .; Grey's answer to, 196,
197 ; retires from public

K.oicinszko—conti nued .

hie, 197 ; last years, 197-

201 ; love of children and
youth, 198 ; love of poor,

198, 199, 201 ; corresponds
with Princess di Carignano,

199, 200 ; correspondence
with Jane Porter, 200 ; inter-
est in education, 200, 201 ;
death, 201 ; last resting
place, ib. ; the hill of, 201,

202 ; Polish cult of, 202 ;
his refutation of Finis Polo-
nicB, 202, 203.

Kosciuszko, Tekla, relations with
husband, 25 ; character, 26 ;
death, 30

Krasinska, Franciszka, 200

Krushtzov, 162

Lafayette, acquaintance with
Kosciuszko and Pulaski, 40

Landor, Walter Savage, Kos-
ciuszko and, 175

Laurens, 47

Lebrun, relations with Kos-
ciuszko, 90, 187

Lee, Harry, on Kosciuszko, 49

Libiszewsld, 173-175, 177

Louis Philippe, visits Kos-
ciuszko, 180

Louis XVI, recognizes United
States, 38 ; execution, 89,
90, 119

Lubomirska, Lud^vika, and Kos-
ciuszko, 33-35. 51. 59. 163,
199

Madalinski, 96, 108, 109, 134,

142, 143
jlarek. Father, 130
Marie, Empress of Russia, 172
McDougall, on Kosciuszko, 41
Mickiewicz, Adam, on patriot-
ism, 23 ; his poetry, 60 ;
his Pan Tadeusz, 70, 202
Mokronowski, in Rising, 113,
150 ; Kosciuszko's letters to,
115, 122, 148
Montpensier, de, 180

14

210

KO^CIUSZKO

Napoleon I, Polish legions and,

182, 183, 186, 187. 189 ;
betrays Poland, 183, 187 ;
enthusiasm of Poles for,

183, 189 ; relations with
Ko^ciuszko, 186-190 ; be-
comes first consul, 187 ; be-
comes emperor, 188 ; victory
at Jena, ib. ; summons Poles
to banner, 188, 189 ; on
Kosciuszko, 190 ; his vic-
tories, ib, ; marches on Paris,

193.
Nicholas, I, of Russia, 196
Niemcewicz, Julian, friendship
with Kosciuszko, 50, 51, 61,
105, 144, 160, 165, 170 ;
patriot and poet, 51, 61 ; in
Florence, 94 ; Kosciuszko's
companion in Rising, 105,
143, 144, 150, 153-156; at
Maciejowice, 156, 157 ; de-
scription of battle, 156-8 ;
taken prisoner, 157, 158 ;
Kosciuszko's companion as
prisoner of war, 159-165 ;
on indignity paid to Kos-
ciuszko, 162 ; imprisonment
in Petersburg, 165, 167 ;
168 ; interview with Kos-
ciuszko, 170, 171 ; leaves
Russia, 172, 173 ; journey
through Finland, 174 ; jour-
ney to England, 175 ; 176 ;
journey to United States,
177 ; 180 ; 181

Oginska, Princess, 150
Oginski, Michal, Prince, 138,

147, 161
Orlewska, Tekla, 64
OrJowski, 31, 62, 87, 145

Parsons, 41

Paszkowski, 190, 201 ■
Paul, I, of Russia, visits Kos-
ciuszko in prison and frees
him, 168 ; colloquy with
Kosciuszko, 168-170 ; sub-
sequent interviews with
Kosciuszko, 170 ; exacts

Paul, I — continued.

oath of allegiance from
Kosciuszko, 171 ; farewell
audience with Kosciuszko,
172 ; 179 ; gift of money to
Kosciuszko, 180, 184, 185,
201 ; KoSciuszko repudiates
oath to, 184, 185

Perronet, 31

Pestalozzi, 200

Poniatowski, J6zef, Polish leader
in Napoleonic wars, 74, 189 ;
in Ukraine campaign, 74-6,
78, 91 ; in Rising, 122, 127;
143 ; Kosciuszko's reception
of, 127

Poniatowski, Stanislas Augustus,
see S.

Poninski, 133, 157

Porter, Jane, 200

Potocki, Felix, 71, 72, 75, 79,
81 ; Kosciuszko's letter to,
82; 83

Potocki, Ignacy, member of
Commission of Education,
53 ; collaboration in Rising,
53. 89, 92, 93, 95, 121 ;
friendship with Kosciuszko,
61, 153 ; patriotic reformer,
61, 8g ; member of National
Council, 127 ; consulted by
Kosciuszko regarding oath,
171

Potocki, Stanislas, 75

Pulaski, Kazimierz, 31, 39, 40

Radifere, 41

Repnin, 31

Robespierre, 91

Rogerson, on Kosciuszko, 167 ;

171, 172, 176
Rzewuski, Severin, 71, 72, 79,

81, 83

Sanguszko, Eustachy, 133
Sanguszko, Princess, 163
Sapieha, Franciszek, 115, 116
Segur, 202
Sheridan, 175

Sierakowski, 150, 153, 154,
158-164

INDEX

211

Sobieski, Jan, 87, 185, 186, 201
Sosnowska, Ludwika, see Lubo-

mirska
Sosnowski, J6zef, 33, 34
Sroki, Wojciech, 106, 107
Stanislas, Augustus, succeeds
to throne of Poland, 27 ;
relations with Catherine II,
27. 33. 77. 80 ; relations
with Kosciuszko, 27, 30-33,
35. 59. 60, 76, 79-81, 113,
119, 122 ; character, 30, 32,
80 ; patron of art and letters,
53 ; speech to Diet, 73, 74 ;
conduct in Ukraine cam-
paign, 75 ; adheres to Targo-
wica, 77, 78 ; Kosciuszko
on, 78, 91, 92 ; 81 ; adheres
to Rising, 112, 113; Kos-
ciuszko's letter to, 120, 121;
in siege of Warsaw, 145
Staszyc, 54

Suvorov, marches against Kos-
ciuszko, 149, 153 ; beats
Sierakowski, 150 ; his mas-
sacre at Praga, 153, 163 ;
his siege of Warsaw, 161

Targowica, Confederation of, 72,
73, 77. 78. 81-83, 120, 138

Walpole, Horace, 71

Washington, George, relations
with Kosciuszko, 37, 39-44,

49,177. 178:43; 45; 50; 180
Wejssenhof, 121
White, Ehza, 179
White, General, 178, 180, 181
White, Mrs., 179, 180
Wilkinson, 38
Wilmot, 47, 48
Wodzicki, 97, 132, 133
Wybicki, 189

Zajonczek, 93, 94, log

Zakrzewski, 113; summons to
citizens of Warsaw, 140,
141 ; 143 ; letter of Kos-
ciuszko to, 145, 146 ; Kos-
ciuszko's last evening with,

153

Zaleski, Michal, Kosciuszko's
friendship for, 57 ; Kos-
ciuszko's letter to his wife,
57, 58 ; Kosciuszko's letters
to, 58, 72, 73, 82, 83

Zeltner, Emilia, and Kosciuszko,
190, 191, 198, 199, 201

Zeltner, family of, 188, 190-192,

. 198, 199, 201.

Zurowska, Tekla, Kosciuszko's
love for, 62-70 ; Kosciuszko's
letters to, 63-67, 69 ; marries
Kniaziewicz, 70

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